Chinese premier snubs Germany's economy minister Habeck

All right, to talk about all of this, I'm joined in the studio by D WS China analyst Clifford Kunin. So, Clifford, it does seem a bit that Habek was rather surprised that this meeting with the Chinese Premier was so abruptly cancelled. What was behind it? Well, I think the Chinese sense they could, they can smell blood. They realise that there's weakness within the EU position, uh, when Habeck is there, they see that there's also, uh, weakness within the German position as well because, uh, within the ruling coalition, there's a difference of views on how to deal with China. Habeck is a bit more bearish, perhaps a bit a bit more, umm, hawkish on how to deal with it than the Chancellor, Olaf Schultz, who is very, very much in favour. Both of them recognise, however, that China's extremely important to the German economy. So with these sort of divisions there, China is is able to express its anger at these new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. When it comes to havoc visiting, they, they cancel the meeting and it's, it's clearly a snob. OK, so there's Chinese anger, but is this anger going to end up being a proper trade war between China and the EU Again, I think these divisions within the EU make it very difficult to, to see how things are going to go. Ursula von der Leyen, the, the head of the Commission is very, very much in favour of, uh, of keeping the pressure on China. They've done this big investigation into, into your Chinese cars and found that they're built with massive subsidies and they're dumping loads of them on the European market. So they want to, they want to try and secure level playing fields. And indeed, Havoc said this during his visit today. At the same time, he also said these are not meant as a punishment. It's only about securing level playing fields. So I think the EU is probably more prepared to negotiate and is less likely to be as hardcore or as, as, uh, robust in its response as the Americans, for example. All right, so this electric car market is 1 issue, but another very important issue for Germany, as we mentioned, is China's support for Russia as this war with Ukraine continues. Where exactly does China stand on this conflict? Well, I think this is one area where the EU is, uh, very much, uh, resolved is in, is in, uh, how China approaches its friendship with Russia when it comes to, to the war in Ukraine. They feel that China is just giving too much support. It's not giving support in terms of direct support in terms of weapons. And there've been reassurances that this won't happen from the Chinese again, but at the same time, it's sort of tacit support is helping the war effort against Ukraine. And that that really angers the Europeans. So I think that this is one area where we're going to see more and more pressure coming from the European side and something to which the the Chinese are going to have to weigh up whether they're prepared to keep trade expanding with Europe while at the same time supporting Russia, which is not as big a trading partner for them. So it's going to be an interesting few months to see how they balance this coming between the two, the between China and Europe. DWS China analyst Clifford Koonen. Clifford, thank you so much for all of your insights.