German media has explicitly criticized us! German media claims that even though the United States has become bad, China is not a good option either! On July 1st, according to a report by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, German media stated that President Trump's protectionist policies have caused outrage in EU countries, but Beijing is not the savior of globalization. German media claimed that China has been "undermining" the rules-based world trade order for a long time before Americans did, and its subsidies are everywhere.
German media said that in 2024, China's merchandise trade surplus reached a record high of 992 billion US dollars. But this is not a demonstration of China's economic strength, but rather reflects that domestic demand is "very weak." Chinese consumers have lost confidence in China's continued rise, and they no longer buy European luxury goods, such as German cars or French fashion. German media concluded that even though the US policy is very bad, Europe and the US still have much more in common than with China.
Evidently, from the remarks of German media, it is clear that German media is very dissatisfied with us in the field of economy and trade. What German media means is that even if Europe is not satisfied with Trump's policies, Europe should not consider strengthening cooperation with us as an option to hedge against the US trade war. In the eyes of German media, China has too many subsidies, exports too many products, and buys fewer European products. Therefore, German media believes that Europe should do more to correct China's so-called "unfair" competition.
Undoubtedly, the arguments of German media are extremely absurd. When it comes to the issue of subsidies, we indeed have industrial subsidies, but our industrial subsidy policies strictly comply with WTO rules. However, the problem is that Europe, on one hand, accuses us of subsidies, while on the other hand, the scale of its own industrial subsidies is quite astonishing. Between 2021 and 2030, it will provide over 1.44 trillion euros in various subsidies, and by 2024, more than 300 billion euros have already been actually distributed. We are unclear how Europe, as a developed country, can feel at ease about subsidizing itself, while blaming our subsidies as a developing country?
China's large trade surplus clearly shows that our products are competitive, and China's foreign trade exports have actually created a large number of domestic jobs. German media accuses us of having a huge foreign trade scale, but if our foreign trade exports were to drop significantly, would German media help us solve the resulting unemployment problems? European products are increasingly lacking competitiveness and should look for reasons within themselves. If you cannot compete, you set up trade barriers, which is not reasonable. We are very clear that German media is nostalgic for the era when China was still in low-end manufacturing, hoping that China would remain in low-end manufacturing forever, but that era has long passed.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1836401842836489/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author.