German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with Chinese human rights lawyers who are dissidents from the regime before traveling to Beijing, a government source said Friday.
The dialogue took place Tuesday via encrypted and secure videoconferencing, the same source emphasized.
Participants in the meeting, whose names were not disclosed, traveled to the premises of the German embassy in Beijing.
Among the dissident lawyers, some have been incarcerated for several years. The latter described their difficult living and working conditions in China, which made a “strong impression”, the source added.
When a German leader visits China, a meeting is normally scheduled with human rights defenders and representatives of civil society.
But this time, it was not possible to schedule a face-to-face meeting with Scholz due to the strict hygiene conditions imposed by the regime to fight the pandemic.
The German chancellor organized his trip for a day – due to the zero covid-19 policy – during which he met Chinese President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang.
Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s visit to Beijing “strengthens practical cooperation” between China and Germany, according to state television CCTV.
The first visit to China by a European leader and a country in the G7 group (the world’s seven largest economies) since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic comes against a background of growing Western mistrust of the Asian country.
Although the Scholz administration has already indicated that it is moving away from the purely commercial approach to the Asian country cultivated by predecessor Angela Merkel, a business delegation is accompanying the German chancellor, including the executive presidents of Volkswagen, BioNtech or Siemens.
Source: DN
