Angela Merkel and Li Keqiang get down to business

Politics & Current Affairs

As mentioned above, Premier Li Keqiang met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin yesterday, where Reuters saysย they signed โ€œa raft of commercial accords worth some 20 billion euros ($23.5 billion)โ€ involving German industrial giants like BASF, BMW, Volkswagen, Daimler, Siemens, and Bosch. Li and Merkel also made a bunch of friendly noises:

  • โ€œAngela Merkel praised China for opening up to foreign investment, drawing a contrast with trade conflicts burdening both countriesโ€™ relations with the U.S.,โ€ says Bloombergย (porous paywall), while Li Keqiang โ€œpresented himself as an ally in her defense of rules-based global trade.โ€
  • BASF signedย a memorandum of understanding โ€œto spend as much as $10 billion on a second chemical complex in China, its largest expansion project yet.โ€ The plant will be 100 percent owned by BASF, and become the first wholly foreign-owned chemical factory in China. Caixin has more on the deal.
  • CATL Batteryย a.k.a. Contemporary Amperex Technologyย is Chinaโ€™s biggest maker of electric car batteries. Bloomberg says it plans to set up a battery factory in Germanyโ€™s eastern state of Thuringia, which โ€œmeans Chinaโ€™s biggest maker of battery cells for electric vehicles is planting its flag in the land of Volkswagen, Daimler and BMW.โ€
  • โ€œBMW AG will make Mini cars in Chinaย for the first time, sealing a joint-venture agreement to produce electric vehicles with partner Great Wall Motor Co. in the worldโ€™s largest automotive market,โ€ according to a separate Bloomberg storyย (porous paywall). ย 
  • Iran nuclear deal:ย Li and Merkel โ€œalso agreed that they want to preserve a nuclear accord with Iran that President Donald Trump has ditched,โ€ according to the Bloomberg article first linked aboveย (porous paywall). ย 
  • Here are the Xinhua News Agency readoutsย of the meeting between Li and Merkel: English, Chinese.