[Marcus Marulus]

Merkel to press China on human rights

By Hugh Williamson in Berlin

August 26 2007


Angela Merkel will use a visit to China starting on Monday to press Beijing to take on greater international responsibility concerning intellectual property rights, climate change and human rights in Africa.

China has “very close ties with Africa”, the German chancellor said before departure on Monday for the three-day visit, and for this reason she would urge Beijing to help “combat the appalling human rights violations in Sudan’s Darfur region”.


China has significant economic interests in Sudan but has been largely resistant to external pressure to take a more critical approach towards Khartoum over the war-torn Darfur region.

Her tough comments were seen on Sunday as part of an effort by Ms Merkel to use a string of foreign trips in the next two months to reinforce her image as an international powerbroker, following her foreign policy successes in the European Union and G8 industrial nations grouping in the first half of 2007.

Her week-long Asia trip includes her first visit as chancellor to Japan, where she will deliver a keynote speech in Kyoto on the urgency of tackling climate change.

In September she will represent Germany at the United Nations General Assembly meeting – a job traditionally performed by the foreign minister – and in October she will make a rare visit by a German chancellor to Africa, visiting Ethiopia, South Africa and Liberia.

India and south-east Asia are also on the agenda of the globe-trotting chancellor, who this month squeezed in a visit to Greenland – the first by a German leader – to highlight her environmental worries.

Pollsters note that Ms Merkel’s standing as Germany’s most popular politician is linked partly to her high international profile and her skill in wringing pragmatic compromises from the EU on its stalled constitution, and from the G8 on climate change.

The chancellor appears determined to maintain her strong poll ratings, even though – following the end of Berlin’s EU presidency – Germany’s political focus is set to return to more mundane domestic concerns.

Her interest in foreign affairs may also be linked to the rising popularity within the Social Democrats, her coalition ally, of the foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the political challenge he may pose following his decision to play a stronger role in domestic politics.

Yet according to Sabine Rosenbladt, editor of Internationale Politik, a German foreign affairs journal, for Ms Merkel’s foreign success record to continue she will “have to focus on delivering on the promises made” for instance at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm.

In this context, Ms Merkel’s visits to Asia this week, and later to Africa, “will need to lead to more concrete results”, she added. Aides to Ms Merkel said she hoped China would make clearer how it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Analysts note however that Beijing remained cautious in its contacts with Ms Merkel, who has been more overtly critical of China than her predecessor Gerhard Schröder.

In a move unlikely to improve relations the chancellor has scheduled for tomorrow a Beijing meeting with activists and independent writers to address concern over media and internet freedom in China.

Ms Merkel also plans to raise China’s “responsibility to protect intellectual property rights”, aides said.

Her departure on Sunday was overshadowed by a report in Der Spiegel magazine that in recent months computers in key German government ministries and the chancellery had been infected by spying programmes launched by Chinese state-backed hackers possibly linked to the Chinese military. Ms Merkel refused to comment but said worries over IPR issues featured “very strongly” in talks with China.


Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

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