Those who must insist on mentioning Merkel, Muscat and China in the same breath should read this
An excerpt:
Thus, although business will continue to be central to relations between China and Germany, the chancellor seems increasingly willing to point out major differences in opinion between the two countries.
Industrial espionage and worrying developments in Chinese foreign policy are cases in point. Most of all, however, Merkel will speak her mind on the question of political freedom.
In her speech at Tsinghua University the chancellor did not mince words when she described what it had meant for her as someone raised in East Germany to finally experience political freedom.
“Twenty-five years ago, at the time of the peaceful revolution in the GDR, I was lucky enough to experience the way that freedom and the free expression of opinion was suddenly possible.”
The meaning of this for China cannot have been lost on the students listening to her: it is 25 years since Tiananmen Square as well as since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
6 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
See more at: http://www.ecfr.eu/blog/entry/a_subtle_change_in_merkels_tone_on_china#sthash.yztx7DlK.dpuf
And on whose side is Muscat?
It is in our interest that China’s central communist regime fail.
Even because there’s a limit to how many Bugatti Veyrons Volkswagen can build.
What will Muscat’s foreign policy be if China is involved directly or indirectly in a war between say N Korea and S Korea? Or between China and Taiwan?
How will the bright spark of our minister for foreign affairs handle such a conflict given that the US and the EU wouldn’t sit pretty on the fence?
Will Malta provide the Chinese with a supply base in the Med against the Sixth fleet?
And if there are issues of difference between the EU and China? On trade, human rights, war, international politics?
Whose side will Muscat take?
And what positions would Louis Grech and George Vella take on such issues? Will Grech side with the EU and Vella with China? Hilarious.
The CIA and MI6 must be very busy these days.
Chances are, neither will side with the EU.