Elisa Hoerhager assumed responsibility for the BDI China office as Chief Representative China on 1 August 2024. Operating since 2016, the BDI office in Beijing is one of three international offices of the BDI, working to further the interests of German industry and strengthen the BDI’s international cooperation.

China has developed into an increasingly strong systemic challenger for Germany, Europe and the entire West – differently to what was expected ten years ago. Furthermore, China is an economic and technological competitor – with occasionally irritating interpretations of the rules of multilateralism. Reasons as to why we should nevertheless still expand cooperation areas with Beijing is explained by Wolfgang Niedermark, member of the BDI Executive Board, in an interview.

Since the enactment of the China Cyber Security Law in 2016, the Chinese leadership has continuously further differentiated China’s cybersecurity and data protection regime. Today, more than 180 laws, technical standards, and administrative measures regulate the usage of data and the preservation of cyber resilience. These legislative acts have far-reaching implications for German companies doing business in and with China.

China is pursuing the issue of standardization with ambition. A separate program has been announced for the end of this year: China Standards 2035, and initial conclusions can already be drawn about its direction. But what would be the consequences of another standardization system?

In the past, the China-related work of the BDI has concentrated, first and foremost, on issues affecting German companies in China. In a strategic position paper published in January, the BDI shifts its focus to the long-term challenges that arise from the competition between economic systems.

China is increasingly playing the role of defender of free world trade, albeit without having distinguished itself as a driving force for a liberal global trade regime. The confrontation between the US government and China poses various risks for German industry.

Chinese company takeovers in Germany are currently being hotly debated. As such, the responses from Berlin and Brussels are politically motivated. For its part, German industry rejects protectionist measures.