Germany, China hold high-level meeting over trade, Ukraine

Trade, climate change and the war in Ukraine are on the agenda on Tuesday as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz meets Chinese Premier Li Qiang, who is on his first foreign trip since taking office. The meeting in Berlin is the seventh time Germany and China have held high-level government consultations and comes a day after Chinese President Xi Jinping met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, indicating an effort by Beijing to reach out to the West and improve frosty relations.
Li, a former Communist Party secretary for Shanghai who took office in March as China’s No. 2 official, met on Monday with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and had dinner with Scholz at the Chancellery before the start of formal talks. Germany is keen to maintain good ties with China, its biggest trading partner, despite wariness over Beijing’s growing assertiveness and refusal to criticise the Russian invasion of Ukraine.