Jul 16, 2025, 17:08
A cargo ship unloads imported crude oil in Qingdao, Shandong province, in March. YU FANGPING/FOR CHINA DAILY
Global Times-A planned acquisition of a 24.99 percent stake in Germany's largest gas company Open Grid Europe by Italian energy company Snam has triggered an investment review by the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy due to the involvement of a Chinese company in Snam's shareholder structure, as the ministry fears that the deal will give China so-called influence over critical gas infrastructure, the Handelsblatt newspaper reported on Monday.
This incident reflects Germany's contradictory stance toward China. While Germany undoubtedly seeks to benefit from China's vast market and comprehensive supply chain, it also apparently attempts to pursue so-called "security" or "de-risking" objectives through various measures. This conflicting mindset is unlikely to achieve any real economic security or stability. The approach of trying to reap the rewards of cooperation while alienating partners with suspicion and barriers risks undermining the mutual trust built over the years, ultimately jeopardizing its own development.
It is not uncommon to see the politicization of economic ties under the pretext of "de-risking" in Europe in recent years, with some countries using it as a pretext to set up barriers to normal economic and trade cooperation. Essentially, this approach of politicizing economic issues and overstretching security concepts in normal business cooperation ignores the reality of deeply intertwined interests among countries in the context of economic globalization, which often leads to greater risks.
Trust is the cornerstone of cooperation. Germany's level of trust in China not only determines the quality and depth of bilateral cooperation but also plays a critical role in whether Germany will be able to seize the development opportunities presented by the Chinese market during the reconfiguration of the global industrial chain. Ultimately, this trust will influence Germany's competitiveness in the global economic landscape.
True "de-risking" lies precisely in deepening mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Germany. Only by strengthening economic complementarity and promoting industrial integration can the two countries build a more stable and resilient cooperative relationship in the complex international situation and jointly cope with the challenges posed by various uncertainties.
During a joint press conference with German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul in early July, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China and Germany are each other's largest trading partners in their respective regions, with bilateral trade exceeding $200 billion for nine consecutive years. Trade with China supports 1 million jobs in Germany, and the Chinese market has attracted more than 5,000 German enterprises to invest and operate. Strengthening mutually beneficial cooperation is a "must-have option" for both countries, serving as a "ballast" of the bilateral relationship, and it is also in line with the new German government's policy focus on economic development.
The complementarity of the two economies has determined that deepening cooperation is a mutually beneficial trend. Germany's advantages in high-end manufacturing, vehicles, chemicals and other fields naturally complement China's huge market scale, complete industrial chain and innovation vitality. Moreover, China's accelerated march toward modernization will provide new development opportunities for German and European enterprises. China and Germany have broad prospects in cutting-edge fields such as green transformation, artificial intelligence and quantum technology.
Notably, an overwhelming 92 percent of member companies of the German Chamber of Commerce in China planned to continue their operations in the country, according to the chamber's survey in December 2024.
Cooperation between China and Germany not only benefits the two countries but also significantly contributes to global economic stability. Germany needs to recognize that succumbing to security anxieties and erecting barriers in pursuit of so-called "security" will gradually lose the initiative in the restructuring of global industrial chains.
Germany's ambivalence toward "security" issues in its cooperation with China is undermining its own quest for economic security and stability. In the context of deeply interconnected global supply chains, genuine economic security cannot be attained by building barriers, but rather through enhanced cooperation.
By embracing a more open and pragmatic approach to mutually beneficial cooperation with China, both countries can boost economic growth and collectively mitigate risks. This is the path to achieving genuine economic security and stability.
That the Houthis fought the US Navy to a draw can only be seen as a humiliating defeat by Asia.
. . .
According to press leaks, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby pressed Japan and Australia to clarify their intentions in a Taiwan contingency. Leaking Colby's demand shuts down Washington's pressure tactics by airing them to domestic political opprobrium in those countries. The leak was unsurprising given the US Navy's less-than-stellar performances in the Red Sea and the South China Sea, demonstrating Japan's and Australia's lack of confidence in US resolve and capabilities.
Why would anyone commit to defend Taiwan if the US itself refuses to do so? Why would Japan and Australia commit to helping a navy that hung the Philippines out to dry only to get humiliated by the Houthis? China's anti-ship missiles and drones are likely to be more effective than those used by the Houthis.
What we are witnessing is the US attempting to do hegemony on the cheap.
- Thucydides trap averted: China speed, dodgy data and the Houthis
In other words, the Great Satan uses its vassals as a weapon, ganging up on other nations but often "leaves them out to dry". Hideki Tojo's granddaughter correctly pointed out that Japan was merely continuing the plunder of China and Korea when she was part of the gang including western powers.
But China can no longer be subdued:
Vaclav Havel said China's economic rise was so fast that “we had not yet had time to be astonished.” Calling China the world's second largest economy is a media tick that the West has yet to abandon. Any proper accounting of China's productive and consumptive powers results in an economy twice the size of the US (see here).
In fact, by some measures of productivity, China overtook the Great Satan in 1996 and is now as big as the rest of the World combined. So sanctions on China is just the Great Satan isolating itself.
All efforts to contain China from tech sanctions to trade wars to media slander have been ineffectual if not counterproductive.
When nations realize that expeditionary navies are obsolete and their breath catches up to China's astonishing growth, the speed of the realignment will be just as astonishing. It will resemble nothing short of a rout.
This should benefit everyone involved, from put upon Europeans to the bonsai-ed Japan and South Korea (see here) to LGBTQIAS2S+-ed Taiwan (see here) to Legalist Qin-esque PRC able to finally relax into its Confucian Tang-esque form. Most of all, it will benefit the United States of America, which can finally come home, circle wagons, lick wounds, plant trees and recover from eight decades of shouldering the costs of hegemony.
So the Anglo/Jew gangsters are still bent on World domination, but have failed. Like Sam Bankman-Fried, they've attempted a double or nothing bet and lost (though it's possible that SBF was merely showing contempt for a goyim court rather than making a genuine attempt at a defence).
The cost of hegemony means they're history's worst ever debtor as it was funded by starting both World wars to impose jew-confetti on the planet. But BRICS+ and ASEAN are dumping the "worthless paper" USD.
"China's gold hoarding: a bad omen for the dollar"
And just as they smear China they've also been heavily bashing gold; peddling silver, platinum, mining shares, ETFs and, of course, buttcoins etc. as distractions from holding the physical metal in your hands.
Threats of taxing unrealised capital gains, section 899 in the OBBB to tax other nations that lend to the Great Satan and a wealth-tax in Poodleville, show they're desperate too.
So they're bankrupt, insolvent and so desperate that they're robbing their own sheeple on the highways with "civil asset forfeiture" in the most ridiculous FARCE in all of history along with peddling imaginary buttcoins and robbing their own businesses with the "structured deposits" rule. As well as the industry in the lands they've thieved being hollowed out, both the Great Satan and poodle admit that they're white-supremacist cheating means their average IQs continue to implode as depicted in their movie, "Idiocracy". Bewilderingly, everything they do seems to make it worse. The OBBB will increase debt by over $3Trillion by 2030, though some say the ever-optimistic CBO is low-balling it and over $6Trn will be the case. The reversal of the ban on Nvidia H20 chips suggests they're headless chickens, having already confirmed that they're sad, little bastards.
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