【英文】德国墨卡托中国研究所报告：德国汽车制造商在中国的坎坷道路（24页）

英文研究报告 2022年11月16日 07:57 管理员

The deep entanglement of Germany’s automotive companies in China has long been a main driver of Berlin’s China policy. CEOs of German carmakers have been frequent participants in government-organized trips to China. All-cabinet government consultations were used to shape corridors for future cooperation, for instance, on autonomous driving. Germany’s government has frequently lobbied on behalf of the country’s automotive industry and used foreign economic policy tools to create a supportive environment. The logic for this has long been that what is good for German carmakers in China is also good for Germany (and Europe). Afer all, in Germany the automotive sector accounts for nearly 10 percent of GDP, 40 percent of research and development (R&D) spending and employs 800,000 people in manufacturing. However, the combination of a more assertive China and emerging Chinese competition create new risks for this long-standing symbiotic relationship. While there is a lot of uncertainty in their boardrooms, Germany’s carmakers still want to increase investment and deepen their R&D footprint in China.

Meanwhile, many policymakers increasingly highlight growing economic dependencies, human rights, and geopolitical concerns, ofen with an undercurrent of fear that Europe could lose its industrial competitiveness. Government and carmakers still share an interest in the long-term success of the automotive industry. But strategic alignment on how best to achieve this goal and to calibrate exposure and entanglement with China is no longer a given. Concerns about the country are proliferating. China’s recent economic coercion of Lithuania by severing its trade relationship, Germany and China’s diverging views of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and concerns related to the human rights situation in China and the future of Hong Kong or Taiwan are issues that cannot be swept under the carpet. The changed political climate in Germany is already afecting carmakers’ China investments. In May 2022, the government denied Volkswagen’s request to prolong the investment guarantees – a form of political risk insurance – for some of its China investments, due to the possibility that this could support human right abuses.1 Furthermore, considering the vulnerabilities exposed in Germany’s relations with Russia, politicians have become more vocal in calling on carmakers to diversify away from and to reduce their dependence on China.