China-Germany relations: Trade cooperation thrives in half a century

A freight train leaves from China's Qingdao to Mannheim in Germany, February 18, 2022. /CFP

Tuesday, October 11, marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Germany.

During the past 50 years, the two countries have achieved significant progress in their economic and trade cooperation. As a result, China and Germany are valuable trading partners.

As of 2021, China had served as Germany's most prominent trading partner for six consecutive years, according to Germany's statistics office.

Last year, bilateral trade increased by 15.1 percent year on year, as goods worth 245.4 billion euros ($279.1 billion) were traded between the two countries, data from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) showed.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic-induced slump in 2020, Germany's trade turnover with China shot up by 3.5 percent year on year, according to Destatis.

In 2021, Chinese imports worth 141.7 billion euros, or a 20.8 percent year-on-year increase, accounted for most of German imports.

Last month, the world's largest producer of chemicals, BASF, opened a new industrial complex in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province, that will see the German industrial giant pump around $10 billion into Chinese production by 2030.

The two nations have also made significant strides in fighting climate change together, as seen during a meeting of foreign ministers on the sidelines of the recent UN General Assembly, with both sides agreeing that they have no fundamental conflicts of interest.