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The heads of state are currently wrestling with the direction of climate policy in Glasgow. As a major polluter, China has to curb its CO2 emissions particularly hard. Within just 30 years, emissions are to be reduced to zero, at least in the overall picture. This poses major economic and social challenges for the People’s Republic. Tens of millions of people are threatened with unemployment. In today’s issue, we are addressing the fundamental question: How can growth, power security, and social stability be successfully balanced?
The effects of the climate crisis are also evident in the Arctic, with rising temperatures and melting ice. And what is bad for the polar bear, pleases riparian countries and the “near-arctic-state”, as China calls itself. New raw material deposits are being uncovered and shorter shipping routes allow for faster ship passages. Amelie Richter analyses how the skirmish over the Arctic could lead to new conflicts and how the EU positions itself.
I hope you enjoy today’s briefing!
China’s climate goals are ambitious. Within the next eight years, it wants to reach the peak in national CO2 emissions. By 2060, emissions are then to fall to “net-zero” – at which point only greenhouse gases that are offset elsewhere may be emitted.
The climate targets require action “at an unprecedented speed and scale,” according to climate expert and journalist Liu Hongqiao. “The road to net-zero will not be an easy one.” Economic, social, and political tensions loom. Can China succeed in transforming an economy that causes about 28 percent of global CO2 emissions annually at the necessary pace?
In terms of economic policy, China faces two major challenges: power security and ensuring growth and jobs.
China’s electricity mix currently still consists of about 65 percent coal-fired power. It is clear to everyone that it will be difficult to reduce dependence on an energy source that is readily available. For this to happen, the majority of China’s power supply will have to be changed to renewable energies within a fairly short timeframe. In its recently adopted climate plans, the government itself talks about “building before destroying.” Before accelerating the phase-out of coal, sufficient renewable energy capacity, power storage, and transmission capacity should first be built. Those in charge will not take any risks here. The current power crisis made it clear to political leaders what is at stake if the shift to renewables jeopardizes power security.
In the past ten years, China has strongly expanded its renewable energy capacities. Wind energy capacity has increased tenfold. The increase in solar energy has been even steeper. However, the overall power demand also increased heavily. Renewables have not yet been able to push back the share of coal-fired power. And China faces major challenges in building the necessary power lines and storage systems. In recent years, even the construction of some new power plants in the wind- and sun-rich western provinces of Gansu, Xinjiang, and Tibet has been halted due to a lack of required transmission capacity and storage systems. In some provinces, more than seven percent of the power produced from renewable sources is thus lost. In Tibet, the figure is almost 25 percent.
The restructuring of the economy will not be easy either. At present, the majority of China’s economy mainly consists of industry. 38 percent of the economic output originates from the industrial and construction sectors. In economies such as India, Japan, and the USA, the figure is between 20 and 25 percent. In addition, sectors with high power demand and heavy CO2 emissions are dominating: steel, concrete, and aluminum industries, the construction sector, and the (petro)chemical industry. And it is precisely in these sectors that it is most difficult to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The positive news is that, overall, China has been quite successful in decoupling economic growth from CO2 emissions since 2010. “China has almost doubled per capita economic output since 2010, while CO2 emissions have remained reasonably stable,” says Liu. And yet, the more emissions are supposed to drop, the harder it will be to maintain the old growth model. Growth through the CO2-intensive construction sector has also helped the political elite in crises past. During the most recent economic crisis in the wake of the Covid pandemic, Beijing fell back on old patterns: Billions were pumped into the CO2-intensive construction sector.
However, China’s political leadership is willing to shut down CO2-intensive industries, says Alexander Brown, an analyst at China research institute Merics. This has social consequences: Already since 2015, employment in coal mining and metal production has been on the decline.
The climate reversal also holds potential for major social tensions. The legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party rests on its ability to create jobs and enable citizens to share in the growing prosperity. There are “threats of social instability and economic stagnation,” writes Sam Geall, an energy and environment expert at think tank Chatham House. This is one reason why the government is not adopting more ambitious climate targets for now.
China’s CO2-intensive industries employ tens of millions of workers. The construction sector alone employs 54 to over 60 million people, varying by source. Coal mining employs between 2.6 and 5 million Chinese citizens, varying by source. By comparison, according to scientific forecasts, the Chinese solar industry will have created approximately 2.3 million new jobs in manufacturing, assembly, and maintenance by 2035. New solar jobs do not even begin to compensate for lost coal employment
In addition to the loss of jobs in the power industry, millions of workers in the steel, aluminum, and chemical industries, as well as in service industries dependent on these sectors, could lose their jobs. And many of those jobs are located in the poorer regions of the country, says Merics analyst Brown. In Shanxi, coal mining accounts for nearly six percent of employment. “Energy-intensive industries are crucial to driving employment and economic output outside of China’s more developed eastern region,” Brown tells China.Table. The trend is thus hitting rural China the hardest. Yet the government originally wanted to stem the exodus from western China to its rich coastal regions.
What’s more, many workers in the CO2-intensive sectors are poorly educated. According to development economist Scott Rozelle of Stanford University, China is already suffering from a massive shortage of skilled labor. The vast majority of its workforce, according to Rozelle, lacks basic skills to become specialists in the service sector, technicians in a chip factory, or to take on office jobs (China.Table reported). As a result, 200 to 300 million people could be structurally “unemployable” in the future, Rozelle said. In 2008, he was honored with the Chinese Government’s Friendship Award, the highest award for foreign experts.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) also states in a study that the number of new jobs created by the renewable energy sector is limited. The restructuring of the power industry will “increasingly create employment problems”, writes the ILO. Older and poorly trained workers in particular have few employment chances in the sector.
So the faster China rebuilds its economy towards more climate protection, the more of its poorly educated people are at risk of being left behind, which will lead to greater social unrest.
On top of all these challenges, China is not a monolithic political bloc. Climate policy is largely defined by the central government. But there are powerful actors in China’s provinces and cities with interests that stand in the way of climate policy. Local officials and municipal leaders traditionally rise within the Chinese Communist Party if they create high economic growth, which in the past has often been at the expense of the environment and the climate.
The preservation of tax revenues and jobs from and in fossil industries is also an important political goal for some provincial governors. There are efforts to give environmental aspects a greater role when promoting civil servants (China.Table reported), but how quickly these efforts will become reality remains to be seen.
Whether China’s political elite will succeed in reconciling climate protection with vital growth, power security and social stability will be a central question in the coming decades. At present, China’s environmental and climate protection lobbies within the political elite “still face an uphill battle to increase domestic ambition when faced with powerful incumbents“, analyses Sam Geall.
At the end of September, China’s icebreaker “Xuelong 2” returned to its homeport of Shanghai. In its hold, the “Snow Dragon”: The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) “Tansuo 4500”, which had been deployed for the first time for scientific research near the seafloor in the latitudes of the Arctic. “Tansuo 4500,” which looks a bit like a giant yellow and red fish, collected important data in the icy waters at the Gakkel Ridge, state news agency Xinhua reported. According to the report, the data will provide information about the exchange of matter and energy and the geological processes in the deep-sea mountain range – and contribute to an “in-depth participation in protecting the environment of the Arctic.”
Because the ice in the Arctic region is melting. “The Arctic is warming three times faster than the global average,” Michael Mann, the EU’s Special Envoy on Arctic Matters, told China.Table. With its climate ambitions as part of the Green Deal, the European Union also has increased interest in the polar region. In mid-October, Brussels published the new edition of its Arctic Strategy. It was prepared jointly by the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the EU Commission. It is primarily about climate and environmental protection, but also about international cooperation.
For example, the EU wants to end the extraction of fossil fuels in the Arctic: “The EU will push for oil, coal, and gas to remain in the ground,” the paper states. Member states are also to be banned from acquiring power from Arctic sources.
But it’s not just about the environment and the fight against global warming. The melting ice has also roused geopolitical ambitions – not least in China. Among other things, Beijing wants to include the polar routes in its “Belt and Road” initiative and senses raw materials in the region (China.Table reported).
“The geopolitical situation in the Arctic has changed a lot recently. There is much more global interest in Arctic affairs,” Mann says. He has been the EU ambassador for the region since April 2020; before moving to Brussels, Mann was the EU ambassador to Iceland for two and a half years. He is therefore well aware of the Chinese influence in the region: China maintains the largest embassy in Reykjavík.
For the EU, Chinese activities in the Arctic region are a safety concern. Beijing’s projects in the Far North are therefore being closely monitored: China is investing in particular in Russian liquefied natural gas, infrastructure projects such as cable connections, and mining, Mann explains. “Beijing is investing a lot, but is not yet as active in the Arctic as it is in other parts of the world.”
China calls itself a “Near-Arctic-State“. EU Special Envoy Mann finds the self-description “a bit strange.” Everyone can call themselves what they want, he says. However, the concept of a “near-Arctic” state is contrary to China’s geopolitical approaches in its own backyard: There, Beijing is trying to keep actors out of the South China Sea who have, according to China, no business being there, Mann says. The fact that China is now interested in a more distant region is “a bit inconsistent”.
But the Far North has also moved up on Brussels’ agenda. Three EU Member States, as well as two members of the European Economic Area, are arctic coastal states. The EU is also a major consumer of raw materials from the area. And it wants to play a role as a “geopolitical player” in the region, as Mann explains. But since the EU is no military power, it must take the diplomatic route: through regional and international cooperation.
In its revised Arctic strategy, Brussels is also focusing on dialogue with all stakeholders in the region. Mann believes that the potential for conflict in the region is currently low. Russian and Chinese interest in the maritime polar routes is well known. However, these routes are still difficult to navigate, according to Mann. It is therefore rather unlikely that the region will see rampant shipping traffic.
The polar region includes all countries whose territory extends into the Arctic Circle: the USA, Canada, Russia, as well as Denmark for Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The EU now wants to cooperate even more closely with allies and, for example, expand its diplomatic activities in Greenland. The autonomous territory of Denmark is not part of the EU. A permanent local presence could now help expand Brussels’ influence – and at the same time contain the Chinese one.
In addition to the EEAS and the EU Commission, the European Parliament in particular is pushing for a greater commitment in the Arctic. The Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, David McAllister, stressed: “Given the growing challenges in the Arctic, it is right and important to reassess the common approach to coordinated European action in the High North. In the future, there should be more EU in the Arctic and more Arctic in the EU.”
The region recognized itself as a “zone of peace” until a few years ago. “In recent years, however, the Russian government has been arming itself in the Far North. China is also developing an ever greater strategic interest in the Arctic,” warns CDU European politician McAllister.
China is moving closer to the European states in the north in the polar region. Estonian MEP Riho Terras, a former army general in his home country, sees this as a major risk: “China is being given the opportunity to influence the security of Europe and the whole of the West,” he said during the debate on the EU Arctic strategy. The melting ice has given new momentum to the race for the Arctic.
Against this background, only time will tell whether the Arctic remains free of conflict. The geopolitical race for the North Pole has only just begun.
More than a quarter of a century spent in China, that can change perspectives considerably. “What fascinates me, even when I travel, is the size of the country and its diverse regions. I had the chance to experience the development of China in person for a period of more than 30 years,” says Bettina Schön-Behanzin, Freudenberg Group’s Regional Representative for Asia. She always enjoys traveling to Germany, but when she is back on the plane to Shanghai after her stays in her home country, she is very happy, says Schön-Behanzin.
Freudenberg is a family-owned company based in Weinheim, Germany, and a supplier to automotive, mechanical engineering, textile, and power-generating industries. The company has a strong presence in China, with 28 production sites and almost 8,000 employees. Schön-Behanzin has been overseeing the company’s activities as a regional representative in Shanghai since 2012. “There are two aspects to the role: The internal support for our business units and the external one for the region. This means a lot of government affairs work. We are in contact with the relevant government agencies because we naturally need their support,” she explains.
Schön-Behanzin is also active in other ways in the field of government affairs. For several years, she was Chairman of the Board of the German Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and is now Vice-President of the European Chamber of Commerce in China. “Both large and small and medium-sized enterprises are represented by the chambers, but the individual assistance mainly serves small and medium-sized enterprises, which simply do not have their own government affairs department,” she says. While the German Chamber of Commerce provides help with market entry, the EU Chamber primarily tries to do lobbying work.
“The EU Chamber was founded in 2000, with 51 member companies at the time. They said they wanted to give a voice to the industrial sectors of the European Union that are active here in China. So they focused on government relations,” Schön-Behanzin recalls. In working groups tailored to industrial sectors, for example, economic and political recommendations are drawn up for government agencies in China, but also for the EU.
The fact that she would one day end up in China did not come about by chance but was planned. “Since I am very interested in languages and China was a market that had just opened up, I decided to study Chinese,” she recalls. She studied sinology combined with business administration in Bonn and Bochum in the eighties. The first study visit to China cleared any last doubts that she would live there one day. “I was in Shanghai for the first time in 1987 and it was a very decisive year. Because when you start a course like Chinese in Germany, the connection is not quite there. That’s why this year here in China was practically like a confirmation for me.”
She moved to the People’s Republic for good in 1996 and has probably rarely looked back since then. “I think it’s impressive what this country has achieved in such a relatively short time – how modern the whole infrastructure is, if you look at the airports or the roads, and how many people it has actually lifted out of abject poverty into a fairly healthy middle class in that time.”
When asked about her favorite spot in China, Schön-Behanzin says: “That’s the Bund [note: the waterfront promenade in Shanghai opposite Pudong]. When I was a student here, we rode our bikes to the Bund and stood there. I honestly don’t even know what we were actually looking at, because it was rice paddies back then. The TV tower was built in 1988/89. Nevertheless, we were fascinated and looked at the river and the opposite side. When I stand here on the Bund today, it’s quite impressive what all has been built.” Constantin Eckner
With winter being just around the corner, it’s important to keep your feet warm. This saleswoman advertises socks via livestream from the eastern province of Zhejiang. Whether they also keep warm from afar is not clear.
The heads of state are currently wrestling with the direction of climate policy in Glasgow. As a major polluter, China has to curb its CO2 emissions particularly hard. Within just 30 years, emissions are to be reduced to zero, at least in the overall picture. This poses major economic and social challenges for the People’s Republic. Tens of millions of people are threatened with unemployment. In today’s issue, we are addressing the fundamental question: How can growth, power security, and social stability be successfully balanced?
The effects of the climate crisis are also evident in the Arctic, with rising temperatures and melting ice. And what is bad for the polar bear, pleases riparian countries and the “near-arctic-state”, as China calls itself. New raw material deposits are being uncovered and shorter shipping routes allow for faster ship passages. Amelie Richter analyses how the skirmish over the Arctic could lead to new conflicts and how the EU positions itself.
I hope you enjoy today’s briefing!
China’s climate goals are ambitious. Within the next eight years, it wants to reach the peak in national CO2 emissions. By 2060, emissions are then to fall to “net-zero” – at which point only greenhouse gases that are offset elsewhere may be emitted.
The climate targets require action “at an unprecedented speed and scale,” according to climate expert and journalist Liu Hongqiao. “The road to net-zero will not be an easy one.” Economic, social, and political tensions loom. Can China succeed in transforming an economy that causes about 28 percent of global CO2 emissions annually at the necessary pace?
In terms of economic policy, China faces two major challenges: power security and ensuring growth and jobs.
China’s electricity mix currently still consists of about 65 percent coal-fired power. It is clear to everyone that it will be difficult to reduce dependence on an energy source that is readily available. For this to happen, the majority of China’s power supply will have to be changed to renewable energies within a fairly short timeframe. In its recently adopted climate plans, the government itself talks about “building before destroying.” Before accelerating the phase-out of coal, sufficient renewable energy capacity, power storage, and transmission capacity should first be built. Those in charge will not take any risks here. The current power crisis made it clear to political leaders what is at stake if the shift to renewables jeopardizes power security.
In the past ten years, China has strongly expanded its renewable energy capacities. Wind energy capacity has increased tenfold. The increase in solar energy has been even steeper. However, the overall power demand also increased heavily. Renewables have not yet been able to push back the share of coal-fired power. And China faces major challenges in building the necessary power lines and storage systems. In recent years, even the construction of some new power plants in the wind- and sun-rich western provinces of Gansu, Xinjiang, and Tibet has been halted due to a lack of required transmission capacity and storage systems. In some provinces, more than seven percent of the power produced from renewable sources is thus lost. In Tibet, the figure is almost 25 percent.
The restructuring of the economy will not be easy either. At present, the majority of China’s economy mainly consists of industry. 38 percent of the economic output originates from the industrial and construction sectors. In economies such as India, Japan, and the USA, the figure is between 20 and 25 percent. In addition, sectors with high power demand and heavy CO2 emissions are dominating: steel, concrete, and aluminum industries, the construction sector, and the (petro)chemical industry. And it is precisely in these sectors that it is most difficult to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The positive news is that, overall, China has been quite successful in decoupling economic growth from CO2 emissions since 2010. “China has almost doubled per capita economic output since 2010, while CO2 emissions have remained reasonably stable,” says Liu. And yet, the more emissions are supposed to drop, the harder it will be to maintain the old growth model. Growth through the CO2-intensive construction sector has also helped the political elite in crises past. During the most recent economic crisis in the wake of the Covid pandemic, Beijing fell back on old patterns: Billions were pumped into the CO2-intensive construction sector.
However, China’s political leadership is willing to shut down CO2-intensive industries, says Alexander Brown, an analyst at China research institute Merics. This has social consequences: Already since 2015, employment in coal mining and metal production has been on the decline.
The climate reversal also holds potential for major social tensions. The legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party rests on its ability to create jobs and enable citizens to share in the growing prosperity. There are “threats of social instability and economic stagnation,” writes Sam Geall, an energy and environment expert at think tank Chatham House. This is one reason why the government is not adopting more ambitious climate targets for now.
China’s CO2-intensive industries employ tens of millions of workers. The construction sector alone employs 54 to over 60 million people, varying by source. Coal mining employs between 2.6 and 5 million Chinese citizens, varying by source. By comparison, according to scientific forecasts, the Chinese solar industry will have created approximately 2.3 million new jobs in manufacturing, assembly, and maintenance by 2035. New solar jobs do not even begin to compensate for lost coal employment
In addition to the loss of jobs in the power industry, millions of workers in the steel, aluminum, and chemical industries, as well as in service industries dependent on these sectors, could lose their jobs. And many of those jobs are located in the poorer regions of the country, says Merics analyst Brown. In Shanxi, coal mining accounts for nearly six percent of employment. “Energy-intensive industries are crucial to driving employment and economic output outside of China’s more developed eastern region,” Brown tells China.Table. The trend is thus hitting rural China the hardest. Yet the government originally wanted to stem the exodus from western China to its rich coastal regions.
What’s more, many workers in the CO2-intensive sectors are poorly educated. According to development economist Scott Rozelle of Stanford University, China is already suffering from a massive shortage of skilled labor. The vast majority of its workforce, according to Rozelle, lacks basic skills to become specialists in the service sector, technicians in a chip factory, or to take on office jobs (China.Table reported). As a result, 200 to 300 million people could be structurally “unemployable” in the future, Rozelle said. In 2008, he was honored with the Chinese Government’s Friendship Award, the highest award for foreign experts.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) also states in a study that the number of new jobs created by the renewable energy sector is limited. The restructuring of the power industry will “increasingly create employment problems”, writes the ILO. Older and poorly trained workers in particular have few employment chances in the sector.
So the faster China rebuilds its economy towards more climate protection, the more of its poorly educated people are at risk of being left behind, which will lead to greater social unrest.
On top of all these challenges, China is not a monolithic political bloc. Climate policy is largely defined by the central government. But there are powerful actors in China’s provinces and cities with interests that stand in the way of climate policy. Local officials and municipal leaders traditionally rise within the Chinese Communist Party if they create high economic growth, which in the past has often been at the expense of the environment and the climate.
The preservation of tax revenues and jobs from and in fossil industries is also an important political goal for some provincial governors. There are efforts to give environmental aspects a greater role when promoting civil servants (China.Table reported), but how quickly these efforts will become reality remains to be seen.
Whether China’s political elite will succeed in reconciling climate protection with vital growth, power security and social stability will be a central question in the coming decades. At present, China’s environmental and climate protection lobbies within the political elite “still face an uphill battle to increase domestic ambition when faced with powerful incumbents“, analyses Sam Geall.
At the end of September, China’s icebreaker “Xuelong 2” returned to its homeport of Shanghai. In its hold, the “Snow Dragon”: The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) “Tansuo 4500”, which had been deployed for the first time for scientific research near the seafloor in the latitudes of the Arctic. “Tansuo 4500,” which looks a bit like a giant yellow and red fish, collected important data in the icy waters at the Gakkel Ridge, state news agency Xinhua reported. According to the report, the data will provide information about the exchange of matter and energy and the geological processes in the deep-sea mountain range – and contribute to an “in-depth participation in protecting the environment of the Arctic.”
Because the ice in the Arctic region is melting. “The Arctic is warming three times faster than the global average,” Michael Mann, the EU’s Special Envoy on Arctic Matters, told China.Table. With its climate ambitions as part of the Green Deal, the European Union also has increased interest in the polar region. In mid-October, Brussels published the new edition of its Arctic Strategy. It was prepared jointly by the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the EU Commission. It is primarily about climate and environmental protection, but also about international cooperation.
For example, the EU wants to end the extraction of fossil fuels in the Arctic: “The EU will push for oil, coal, and gas to remain in the ground,” the paper states. Member states are also to be banned from acquiring power from Arctic sources.
But it’s not just about the environment and the fight against global warming. The melting ice has also roused geopolitical ambitions – not least in China. Among other things, Beijing wants to include the polar routes in its “Belt and Road” initiative and senses raw materials in the region (China.Table reported).
“The geopolitical situation in the Arctic has changed a lot recently. There is much more global interest in Arctic affairs,” Mann says. He has been the EU ambassador for the region since April 2020; before moving to Brussels, Mann was the EU ambassador to Iceland for two and a half years. He is therefore well aware of the Chinese influence in the region: China maintains the largest embassy in Reykjavík.
For the EU, Chinese activities in the Arctic region are a safety concern. Beijing’s projects in the Far North are therefore being closely monitored: China is investing in particular in Russian liquefied natural gas, infrastructure projects such as cable connections, and mining, Mann explains. “Beijing is investing a lot, but is not yet as active in the Arctic as it is in other parts of the world.”
China calls itself a “Near-Arctic-State“. EU Special Envoy Mann finds the self-description “a bit strange.” Everyone can call themselves what they want, he says. However, the concept of a “near-Arctic” state is contrary to China’s geopolitical approaches in its own backyard: There, Beijing is trying to keep actors out of the South China Sea who have, according to China, no business being there, Mann says. The fact that China is now interested in a more distant region is “a bit inconsistent”.
But the Far North has also moved up on Brussels’ agenda. Three EU Member States, as well as two members of the European Economic Area, are arctic coastal states. The EU is also a major consumer of raw materials from the area. And it wants to play a role as a “geopolitical player” in the region, as Mann explains. But since the EU is no military power, it must take the diplomatic route: through regional and international cooperation.
In its revised Arctic strategy, Brussels is also focusing on dialogue with all stakeholders in the region. Mann believes that the potential for conflict in the region is currently low. Russian and Chinese interest in the maritime polar routes is well known. However, these routes are still difficult to navigate, according to Mann. It is therefore rather unlikely that the region will see rampant shipping traffic.
The polar region includes all countries whose territory extends into the Arctic Circle: the USA, Canada, Russia, as well as Denmark for Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The EU now wants to cooperate even more closely with allies and, for example, expand its diplomatic activities in Greenland. The autonomous territory of Denmark is not part of the EU. A permanent local presence could now help expand Brussels’ influence – and at the same time contain the Chinese one.
In addition to the EEAS and the EU Commission, the European Parliament in particular is pushing for a greater commitment in the Arctic. The Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, David McAllister, stressed: “Given the growing challenges in the Arctic, it is right and important to reassess the common approach to coordinated European action in the High North. In the future, there should be more EU in the Arctic and more Arctic in the EU.”
The region recognized itself as a “zone of peace” until a few years ago. “In recent years, however, the Russian government has been arming itself in the Far North. China is also developing an ever greater strategic interest in the Arctic,” warns CDU European politician McAllister.
China is moving closer to the European states in the north in the polar region. Estonian MEP Riho Terras, a former army general in his home country, sees this as a major risk: “China is being given the opportunity to influence the security of Europe and the whole of the West,” he said during the debate on the EU Arctic strategy. The melting ice has given new momentum to the race for the Arctic.
Against this background, only time will tell whether the Arctic remains free of conflict. The geopolitical race for the North Pole has only just begun.
More than a quarter of a century spent in China, that can change perspectives considerably. “What fascinates me, even when I travel, is the size of the country and its diverse regions. I had the chance to experience the development of China in person for a period of more than 30 years,” says Bettina Schön-Behanzin, Freudenberg Group’s Regional Representative for Asia. She always enjoys traveling to Germany, but when she is back on the plane to Shanghai after her stays in her home country, she is very happy, says Schön-Behanzin.
Freudenberg is a family-owned company based in Weinheim, Germany, and a supplier to automotive, mechanical engineering, textile, and power-generating industries. The company has a strong presence in China, with 28 production sites and almost 8,000 employees. Schön-Behanzin has been overseeing the company’s activities as a regional representative in Shanghai since 2012. “There are two aspects to the role: The internal support for our business units and the external one for the region. This means a lot of government affairs work. We are in contact with the relevant government agencies because we naturally need their support,” she explains.
Schön-Behanzin is also active in other ways in the field of government affairs. For several years, she was Chairman of the Board of the German Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and is now Vice-President of the European Chamber of Commerce in China. “Both large and small and medium-sized enterprises are represented by the chambers, but the individual assistance mainly serves small and medium-sized enterprises, which simply do not have their own government affairs department,” she says. While the German Chamber of Commerce provides help with market entry, the EU Chamber primarily tries to do lobbying work.
“The EU Chamber was founded in 2000, with 51 member companies at the time. They said they wanted to give a voice to the industrial sectors of the European Union that are active here in China. So they focused on government relations,” Schön-Behanzin recalls. In working groups tailored to industrial sectors, for example, economic and political recommendations are drawn up for government agencies in China, but also for the EU.
The fact that she would one day end up in China did not come about by chance but was planned. “Since I am very interested in languages and China was a market that had just opened up, I decided to study Chinese,” she recalls. She studied sinology combined with business administration in Bonn and Bochum in the eighties. The first study visit to China cleared any last doubts that she would live there one day. “I was in Shanghai for the first time in 1987 and it was a very decisive year. Because when you start a course like Chinese in Germany, the connection is not quite there. That’s why this year here in China was practically like a confirmation for me.”
She moved to the People’s Republic for good in 1996 and has probably rarely looked back since then. “I think it’s impressive what this country has achieved in such a relatively short time – how modern the whole infrastructure is, if you look at the airports or the roads, and how many people it has actually lifted out of abject poverty into a fairly healthy middle class in that time.”
When asked about her favorite spot in China, Schön-Behanzin says: “That’s the Bund [note: the waterfront promenade in Shanghai opposite Pudong]. When I was a student here, we rode our bikes to the Bund and stood there. I honestly don’t even know what we were actually looking at, because it was rice paddies back then. The TV tower was built in 1988/89. Nevertheless, we were fascinated and looked at the river and the opposite side. When I stand here on the Bund today, it’s quite impressive what all has been built.” Constantin Eckner
With winter being just around the corner, it’s important to keep your feet warm. This saleswoman advertises socks via livestream from the eastern province of Zhejiang. Whether they also keep warm from afar is not clear.