"This suggests a continuation of the separate ''values system'' which applied in Nazi Germany and which caused so much angst amongst other western countries such as USA at the time."
You have deliberately picked the worst of German history to support your claim that anyting other than US value system is bad for the world! Germany, after its defeat in WWII, has done well; please give them credit.
"For one thing, Scholz follows the line of former leader Gerhard Schröder, which stresses a pragmatic approach and an independent values system different from [that of] the US," This suggests a continuation of the separate ''values system'' which applied in Nazi Germany and which caused so much angst amongst other western countries such as USA at the time.
Angela Merkel is definitely a very intelligent lady living in her own legend. She brought Germany through thick and thin relentlessly.
Let the new German leader will perform well or even better so as to benefit Germany and the world.
The preliminary result of Germany's election showed that the left-leaning Social Democratic Party (SPD) narrowly beat the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the centrist-right, conservative party, the party of outgoing Chancellor Merkel. This has made Olaf Scholz, leader of SPD, the next possible leader of Germany.
With all 299 of Germany's electoral districts reporting, the SDP won 25.7 percent of the vote, beating the CDU of Chancellor Angela Merkel, which posted record losses by taking only 24.1 percent, according to the Federal Returning Officer, CNN reported.
Scholz said voters wanted him to be the next chancellor. "Many citizens have put their crosses next to the SPD because they want a change in government and also because they want the next chancellor of this country to be called Olaf Scholz," he said in remarks at his party's headquarters, CNN reported.
The name Scholz hardly rings a bell to the Chinese public, until he ran. As the finance minister and vice-chancellor in Merkel's grand coalition government, Scholz has been reticent about his blueprint on the China policy during the election. Yet Chinese observers said Scholz shares abundant connections with China, and the new government will be more likely than others to continue Merkel's policy.
When asked about whether he will change the current policy on China, Scholz told media that the most important thing his party is concentrating right now is to make EU stronger and has its own stance.
He said Asia is rising and many countries in other parts of the world are making great achievements. It is for the world to seek common recognition, and to negotiate in a satisfactory way. He believed that a strong and independent Europe is the basis for the world to achieve peaceful coexistence.
At the televised debate, Scholz avoided talking about China, only stressing the need for a strong and independent Europe on the diplomatic front.
"As the first mayor of Hamburg, sister city of Shanghai, Scholz kept deep connections and cooperation with China, especially with the city of Shanghai," Jiang Feng, a scholar with Shanghai International Studies University, told the Global Times.
Jiang noted that being a seasoned politician on finance and trade, Scholz was aware of the importance China-German ties carry for Germany's economic development. Merkel's "pragmatic" China policy will be more likely carried out by the SPD leader, according to Jiang.
Scholz met with Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng in China in 2019 at the China-Germany High Level Financial Dialogue. He also met with Chinese President Xi Jinping when Xi visited Hamburg in 2017, where Scholz was its mayor.
"For one thing, Scholz follows the line of former leader Gerhard Schröder, which stresses a pragmatic approach and an independent values system different from [that of] the US," Zhao Junjie, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of European Studies, told the Global Times on Sunday.
"I'll be darned," is what Biden said when a reporter told him that the Social Democrats were ahead in the election. "They're solid," he said.
US media regard the German election as "lacking excitement" and the New York Times mocked Scholz as "boring" and said the campaign has revealed a "charisma vacuum." Jiang said that Scholz's SPD is traditionally not a pro-US party like Merkel's CDU/CSU, and pursues a more "pragmatic" route.
China is willing to cooperate with the new German government to safeguard China-German ties, and hopes the new administration will continue a "pragmatic and balanced" China policy, said Hua Chunying, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, when commenting on Germany's election.
Hua also expressed "high appreciation" toward current Merkel, who visited China 12 times while in office, for her contribution to pushing forward China-German ties.
Yet, the results are far from over for what analysts called "the most uncertain election" in German history. The future is filled with uncertainties, as the country's increasingly fragmented electoral landscape gives smaller parties, the Greens and the Free Democrats, king-making powers to decide which one they choose to form an alliance with; and forming a coalition may takes months.
Jiang predicted that China-Germany relations will likely experience a brief bumpy period after a new leader takes office, as the Greens and the Free Democrats, who are hawkish on China, are likely to join a coalition government.
"Yet such turbulence will be short-lived, as Germany will eventually sway back to rationality," Jiang noted, saying that Germany will find it hard to push forward climate change-related issues without China's help, and its business and trade cannot thrive without the Chinese market, "especially after the pandemic, it is hard to decouple from Beijing."
In her 16 years in power, Chancellor Angela Merkel took a leading role not only in charting Germany's course but influencing the path taken by Europe too.
Here are the stories of three people whose lives were upended by three of Merkel's most significant policy decisions:
Syrian in symbolic Merkel selfie
The encounter was quick - "maybe a few seconds" - during the febrile month of September 2015, in front of a temporary refugee shelter in Berlin.
Merkel, who only days before had made the watershed decision not to close Germany's borders to a wave of people fleeing war and oppression, was flanked by twitchy bodyguards.
Anas Modamani, a young Syrian who had just arrived in Germany, saw a limousine and decided it was his chance for a selfie with a woman he then believed to be a "famous actress."
A media photographer took a photo of Modamani getting the selfie - within hours, the snapshot of the 18-year-old refugee and the chancellor had become a symbol of Merkel's generous migration policy.
'Saved my life'
After taking part in protests in his hometown of Derayya, a suburb of Damascus, Modamani knew his days in Syria were numbered and began preparing for the long trek to Europe.
As Merkel embarks on retirement, the talkative young man does not hesitate to say that the German leader "saved my life."
As Modamani sees it, Merkel was the only European leader to worry about the fate of Syrians fleeing the war.
The nuclear lobbyist
German nuclear plant executive Ralf Gueldner was on a skiing holiday in the Swiss Alps when he read over breakfast that an earthquake had hit the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan.
Less than a week after the disaster, Merkel would dramatically turn her back on nuclear energy and the industry to which Gueldner had dedicated his life's work.
Gueldner had been "fascinated" by atomic energy since his student studies, an interest that led to a job in the industry, working in nuclear safety.
He stuck with it, even when - after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 - parents would approach him at the school gate to take up the subject with him.
Gueldner rose to be an executive at German energy company E.On's nuclear subsidiary and in 2010, the president of the German Nuclear Forum, in effect the sector's chief lobbyist and spokesman.
Powering down
The shock over Fukushima was quickly followed by a sense of "personal dismay" at the consequences for the industry.
Looking back, Gueldner described the period as a "sad moment." The contributions he and his colleagues had made, as he saw it, "to the protection of the climate and to our safety" were "wiped away at the stroke of a pen."
The difficult task of maintaining workers' motivation followed.
The last nuclear reactors will go offline at the end of 2022.
A board member at the nuclear energy company where he used to be an executive and vice president of the successor organization to the German Nuclear Forum, Gueldner is still making the argument for nuclear energy, despite officially retiring in 2016.
The Athens cleaner-turned-MEP
Once a cleaner struggling to fight for the rights of others like her, Constantina Kuneva may never have set her sights on a seat in the EU's parliament had she not been provoked into action by the painful austerity prescribed to Athens during the EU debt crisis.
In November 2009, Athens revealed a sharp rise in its public deficit that would unleash a financial crisis across the eurozone and leave Greece on its knees for a decade.
In exchange for bailout cash and to stop Greece from crashing out of the eurozone, the "troika," made up of the IMF, EU, and ECB, demanded across-the-board reforms from Greece - a tough stance that for many Greeks was personified by Merkel.
The stringent terms of the bailout sparked huge protests in Greece, with demonstrators venting their fury over the thousands of job losses and sweeping wage and pension cuts across the country.
Forced abroad for treatment
Kuneva herself was at that time recovering from a extremely horrific acid attack suffered just months before Greece slumped into its biggest post-war crisis.
An unknown assailant had poured acid on her face and down her throat in an attack believed to be linked to her union activities.
Kuneva said the poor conditions in Greece meant she could not get the treatment she needed in the country and had to travel to France.
Merkel "supported this policy" that hurt the common people, Kuneva said.
Still paying the price
As she recovered from her attack, Kuneva decided that she had to fight for Greece.
She joined the ticket of Greek radical leftist party Syriza on a list led by Alexis Tsipras, becoming one of 50 to win a seat at the Strasbourg parliament.
Kuneva does not only have harsh words for Merkel though, lauding her decision to keep Germany open to migrants in 2015.
But she said that Greece was still paying the price of the bailout policies.
Job losses, benefit cuts, and tax hikes were accompanied by the worst unemployment rate in memory, forcing the country's best and brightest to seek a better future abroad.
"Nothing grows [in Greece today]. What is left for us? " said Kuneva.
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