Editor's Note: Jiang Feng is a research professor at Shanghai Academy of Global Government and Area Studies (SAGGAS), dean of the Institute for European Studies and chairman of the Council of SAGGAS. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's first visit to China since taking office has drawn wide attention. In the days leading up to his China visit, Merz outlined his foreign-policy strategy of "dual recalibration," which calls for reducing Germany's excessive security dependence on the United States while correcting its over-reliance on China economically.

Accompanying the chancellor are not only cabinet members but also representatives from the business community, academia and leading think tanks, signaling the visit's dual purpose – to tighten economic ties with China while deepening Germany's strategic understanding of the country.

Moving beyond the 'systemic rival' frame: the political precondition for stable China-Germany relations

The "dual recalibration" is, at its core, a realist response to intensifying great-power rivalry, fractures in transatlantic relations, and rising calls for European strategic autonomy.

In recent years, Berlin has framed its China policy through three simultaneous lenses: partner, competitor, and systemic rival. With all three lights flashing at once, no one knows which to follow, leaving practical cooperation frequently disrupted by ideological and bloc-based thinking, perceptions of China skewed, and policy toward China marked by ambivalence and drift.

Casting China as a "systemic rival" is yet another historic strategic misjudgment in Germany's China policy. The reality is that China upholds multilateralism and the foundational norms of international law and is committed to working with all countries to refine and improve global governance.

The shared interests between China and Germany far outweigh their differences, and the scope for cooperation far exceeds competitive tensions. If Germany is to achieve the "balance of values and interests" it seeks, it should not impose exclusionary ideological barriers on bilateral relations.

Germany should draw lessons from two strategic misjudgments in its China policy over the past decades: first, the assumption that China's system lacked the capacity for innovation; and second, the belief that engagement – "change through cooperation" – would drive systemic transformation in China.

In fact, today's China has evolved into a major global center of innovation and competitiveness, with its state system becoming more consolidated. Faced with the failure of these two misjudgments, Europe and the United States have grown frustrated, viewing their earlier expectations as "naive," and have swung toward concern and defensiveness about potential influence from China's system – a narrative that has also gained traction in German political discourse.

For Berlin to recalibrate its China policy, it must first move beyond a binary, zero-sum view of political systems. This entails abandoning ideology-driven bloc confrontation and the assumption that systemic differences necessarily amount to systemic rivalry. It also requires correcting a set of entrenched policy misperceptions – equating economic complementarity with strategic vulnerability, conflating competition with confrontation, and recasting de-risking as wholesale decoupling. This visit by Chancellor Merz to China presents a crucial opportunity for Germany to recalibrate its understanding of China and rebuild strategic consensus.

Pragmatic, win-win, and balanced economic cooperation: the bedrock of resilient Sino-German relations

Merz's visit to China leading a large business delegation underscores German industry's deep stake in and confidence in the Chinese market, reaffirming that pragmatic economic cooperation remains an unshakable cornerstone of China-Germany relations.

Germany's economy is grappling with weak growth, industrial transition, and intensifying external competition, prompting the Merz government to pursue reforms to boost efficiency and restore economic growth. China's economy faces its own domestic and external headwinds but is opening further and shifting toward high-quality growth, with new drivers emerging in renewable energy, advanced manufacturing, the digital economy and green industries. Rather than diminishing, the complementarity between the two economies is evolving, as transformation on both sides creates new points of convergence.

Germany's so-called "excessive economic reliance on China" is in fact the result of market forces and comparative advantage. Artificially severing integrated supply chains or pursuing decoupling would only harm German firms and undermine the competitiveness of the German economy.

China has been Germany's largest trading partner for years, with many flagship German companies investing and building a strong presence there, deeply embedded in the market. They have both benefited from China's growth and contributed to its industrial upgrading and technological progress. This is a natural outcome of globalized resource allocation, not the "strategic risk" some claim.

Germany's de-risking agenda should concentrate on practical domains such as supply-chain security, fair competition, and intellectual property protection – managing risks through stronger rules and deeper cooperation rather than through the securitization of economic policy, protectionism, or market fragmentation, which only generate new vulnerabilities.

For Germany's export-oriented economy, the integrity of the global market is a core strategic interest, while its fragmentation constitutes the greatest systemic risk.

China and Germany should seize the opportunity of this visit to deepen economic and trade consultations, strengthen trade-balancing mechanisms, expand trade volumes and optimize the trade structure. They should upgrade cooperation in traditional sectors such as automotive, machinery, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, while expanding collaboration in emerging fields including renewable energy, hydrogen, carbon capture and utilization, the industrial internet and artificial intelligence.

Jointly developing third-party markets would open new areas of cooperation, new growth drivers, and new frameworks for both economies.

China-Germany coordination on global governance: a mark of shared responsibility

A humanistic outlook, a strong sense of history, and a shared responsibility for the future are distinctive common threads in the traditional cultures of both China and Germany.

Today's world faces a spectrum of global challenges – from climate change and energy crises to food security, space security, public health and regional conflicts – none of which any country can tackle alone. Multilateral cooperation is the only viable path forward.

Regrettably, under the influence of notions such as "de-risking," the securitization of economic relations, and the framing of China as a "systemic rival," the trust underpinning bilateral exchanges and cooperation has weakened. Concrete collaboration has diminished, and even academic exchanges between scholars have come under scrutiny through national-security review mechanisms.

It should be recognized that the "systemic rival" framing has not only inflicted significant damage on China-Germany relations but also deprived global governance efforts of the sustained momentum that closer China-Germany cooperation could provide. China-Germany coordination in global governance benefits not only both societies but also the wider world, serving as a source of stability and constructive solutions in an increasingly turbulent international landscape.

Germany is undergoing significant domestic and foreign-policy adjustment, while both the Chinese and German economies face structural transition and external pressures.

Against this backdrop, expectations are high that Chancellor Merz's visit to China will, together with China's leadership, help define the strategic direction of China-Germany relations. It could also bring much-needed predictability and stability to a fragmented world and enable both countries to play their strategic roles in global governance.