Possible port deal outraged: "Germany makes little men before China"

Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann considers the sale of critical infrastructure to China to be a “blatant mistake”. Since Olaf Scholz wants to approve Chinese entry into the port of Hamburg, the FDP defense expert questions the chancellor’s security strategy.

The FDP politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann has sharply criticized the chancellor’s office for sticking to a Chinese entry point at a container terminal in the port of Hamburg. “What else has to happen in the world for Germany to come to terms with reality and not behave in front of the enemies of the free democratic world? Selling critical infrastructure to China is a blatant mistake and should be stopped,” she said.

She was glad that the federal ministries involved remained steadfast against the chancellor’s office. The case raises fundamental questions about the course of German security policy, according to Strack-Zimmermann, who chairs the Defense Committee in the Bundestag. “One wonders who is actually advising the Federal Chancellor. A chancellery that wants to sell critical infrastructure to China, a federal president who is canceling a trip to Kyiv that would have been such an important sign, a head of the chancellery who is delivering urgently needed tank deliveries compares the miracle weapons of the Nazis – I’m speechless,” she said.

Russia is committing brutal war crimes in the heart of Europe, and Germany is facing the shards of its Russia policy of the past decades, she said. Nevertheless, the chancellor’s office apparently believes “that the same strategy that led to this shambles can now be used to confront China in order to placate China,” she said. “China is the next big threat after Russia.”

Federal Minister of Justice Marco Buschmann had also spoken out against the partial sale to a Chinese state-owned company. Germany should not repeat the mistakes made in relation to Russia with China, said Strack-Zimmermann’s party friend. The chairman of the Europe Committee in the Bundestag, Anton Hofreiter from the Greens, said almost exactly the same wording.