City officials in the northern German port city of Kiel were flattered this year when the Chinese port city of Qingdao – about 40 times its size – proposed to partner as a sister city. They rushed to embrace the offer.
The two cities had a history of cooperation dating back to when the Germans helped their Chinese counterparts develop a sailing venue for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Both have large commercial ports, expansive boardwalks and public beaches. It seemed like a good match.
Almost too good even for security experts, who noticed other less innocent similarities.
Home to about 250,000, Kiel is home to much of Germany’s Baltic Navy fleet, Germany’s equivalent of the Navy SEALs, military research facilities and major shipbuilders who are making six brand new, state-of-the-art submarines, among other things.
A city of more than nine million people, Qingdao is home to China’s North Sea Fleet, a marine research academy and China’s premier submariners school, which specializes in submarine hunting.
“It is clear that Kiel can be of great importance as a naval port,” said Göran Swistek, a retired German naval commander and security expert. “There are great opportunities to observe German or Allied ships up close in Kiel.”
A subsequent outcry from security experts and federal politicians has now scrambled Kiel’s plans. While the city council initially approved the partnership in March, it will vote on Thursday whether to form a panel to re-evaluate the partnership or even halt it altogether.
The swivet in Kiel speaks of a burgeoning shift in Germany’s view of China, especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine – and not just because of Beijing’s support for Moscow.
Once seen by Germany primarily as a lucrative export market, China is now recognized as a growing global power. Germans have been painfully deprived of cheap Russian gas in the past year and are wary of making themselves economically vulnerable as well.
China would have a huge influence on the German economy if hostilities between East and West broke out over Taiwan. In 2021, Germany exported more than 100 billion euros worth of goods to China, making the country the largest market for German goods after the United States. When it comes to cars – one of the main drivers of German industry – China is the largest market.
Former Chancellor Angela Merkel regularly traveled to China with huge trade delegations. But her successor, Olaf Scholz, has been widely criticized for doing the same thing last year, and an attempt by a Chinese entity to buy a container port in Hamburg has sparked a months-long dispute in his coalition government.
Many are now trying to recalibrate ties between the two countries, a delicate and at times tense process that was seen on Tuesday during a visit to Berlin by Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang.
At the meeting, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told Mr Qin that China could do more to end the war in Ukraine. Last month, when she visited Beijing, she warned China of military escalation in Taiwan.
“As a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, China can play an important role in ending the war if it so chooses,” she said Tuesday, referring to Ukraine.
Still, the vehement opposition to the Qingdao partnership surprised Kiel City Council Chairman Hans-Werner Tovar, who oversaw the start of partnerships with two other cities. After all, he states that Qingdao and Kiel already have a friendly relationship and that both cities have sent delegations in the past.
“Those who say that this step is somehow hugely important and that the world will end because of it – even though the exchanges have been going on all along, just not officially – know nothing about municipal politics, much less from foreign policy to municipal politics,” said Mr. Tovar.
City partnerships, generally consisting of a formal agreement that allows for regular visits by trade delegations, educational exchanges, local research collaboration and more, played an integral role in the unification of Europe after World War II. Many German cities are paired with homologues in France and England.
Kiel, a particularly extroverted city, has 13 such partnerships, with places as diverse as San Francisco and Tanzania’s Moshi district. Partnerships with two Russian cities have been interrupted since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Mr. Tovar, who is 74 and will retire early next month, likens the collaboration with Qingdao to that with Gdynia, Poland and Stralsund in the former East Germany, established before the fall of communism in the late 1980s.
“Municipal foreign policy is characterized by actually trying to break down barriers or not let them arise in your head in the first place,” he said, adding, “If the Chinese want to spy, they absolutely don’t need a city partnership to do it. “
But some security experts disagreed. “Access to sensitive facilities often depends on local contacts,” said Sarah Kirchberger, a security expert specializing in China at Kiel University’s Security Policy Institute who helped raise the alarm. “Not everything can be learned through cyber espionage.”
Another expert, Sandra Heep, head of the China Center at the City University of Applied Sciences in Bremen, generally favors the kind of exchange that comes with city partnerships, but warns that strict guardrails are required in China’s case.
“We need more dialogue and more exchange with China,” she said. “But it is imperative to ensure that this does not lead to a situation where sensitive information, especially information that could be useful to the Chinese military, flows into China, especially given the increasing risk of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. “
Kiel is now a particularly ripe target, warn Dr. Kirchberger and others, because Chancellor Scholz’s commitment to inject 100 billion euros into the German defense budget has the port buzzing.
With an eye on Russia just over the Baltic Sea horizon, ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, one of Germany’s largest submarine builders, is leading a joint venture with Norway to build six new submarines.
Behind closed doors, managers at the shipbuilding company, which employs 3,500 people in Kiel, admit to being concerned, two people with direct knowledge of the situation said.
If the German impetus for the partnership comes from a city level, it will likely be checked at – or at least approved by – a much higher level on the Chinese side, Professor Heep said. “The Chinese side generally always acts more strategically than the German side.”
The friendship between the two cities began nearly two decades ago when Qingdao approached Kiel to help build a sailing venue for the Olympic Games. Kiel had experience organizing sailing events for the two German Summer Olympic Games, in 1936 and 1972.
“They told us, ‘We don’t have boats and nobody knows how to sail – oh, and we’ve never organized a regatta either,'” said Uwe Wanger, who helps coordinate the city’s youth sailing program in Keel. first exchanges with representatives in Qingdao.
Kiel helped Qingdao set up a sailing scene and an annual ‘sailing week’, in which 600 local children learn to sail on Optimist dinghies. “Kiel can be proud of the fact that we helped them along the way,” said Mr Wanger.
Others are less charmed by the friendship. One of them is Antonia Grage, 30, a conservative politician who is running for city council in the upcoming elections.
When she heard about the plan, she went to the press and eventually persuaded members of her party to vote against the measure, which failed to get the measure passed.
Ms Grage objected to the partnership, saying that a “totalitarian government” should not be rewarded with a city partnership.
“If you look at our other partners,” she said, “Qingdao just doesn’t fit the bill.”