Just recently, foreign minister Wadephul, who had the audacity to say aloud what every naval strategist from Taipei to Tokyo mutters under their breath, found his trip to the far east frozen in diplomatic dry ice.
And yet into this jittery atmosphere strides Lars Klingbeil — not a dupe, not a dove, but something rarer in contemporary politics: a man attempting realpolitik without immediately sliding into sycophancy. He repeats the line, “It is better to speak with China than about China,” and one sees the domestic critics sharpening their quips. But the keen observer would have recognised the point: diplomacy is not therapy, and talking with autocrats is sometimes the only way to prevent them from mistaking your silence for weakness.
Merz, for his part, is correct to note the increasingly repressive and aggressive behaviour of the Chinese leadership. But Klingbeil, unlike some of his predecessors, seems to understand that naming the problem is not itself a strategy. The rare-earth bottleneck would bring German industry — that most Teutonic of secular religions — to a standstill within weeks. And the Chinese know this. They squeeze that leverage with the cool, reptilian patience of a power utterly confident in its asymmetries.
Still, let us give Klingbeil his due: he does not bow, he bargains. He does not flatter, he probes. And in doing so he walks that thin wire between necessary engagement and fatal naivety. When he says that Beijing “would not make such promises if they did not mean them,” the line has the air of someone who knows full well it is a diplomatic fiction — but one worth maintaining until Europe has built the industries, alliances, and supply chains that will allow it to shrug off Beijing’s economic blackmail once and for all.
In contrast, China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng makes his demands with the self-assurance of a man who has long since concluded that Europe cannot tell the difference between partnership and dependency. He wants the EU to stop protecting its industries from Chinese overcapacity — the industrial equivalent of insisting a drowning man hold the fire hose a little steadier.
Meanwhile, Europe retains only one meaningful lever: access to its market. A powerful tool — but one that loses potency with each passing year as China builds alternative outlets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The window is open, but the draft is fading.
Whether Klingbeil’s charm offensive succeeds is almost beside the point. What matters is that he is attempting to steer Germany away from the fatal binary of grovelling engagement on the one hand and theatrical denunciation on the other. He is, in effect, trying to practice foreign policy as if Europe still had agency — which is more than can be said for many of his peers.
Helmut Schmidt would have raised an eyebrow, certainly. Perhaps two. But he would have recognised in Klingbeil a man who understands that realpolitik is not surrender — it is preparation. It is the art of buying time until you have the strength to speak without flinching. And Europe, God help it, still needs a great deal of that time.
