German Chancellor Scholz leaves Macron "back home" during trip to Beijing

Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz declined an offer by his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to accompany his German colleague on his one-day visit to China.

Reuters reported this by citing government sources from the Bundestag, which stated the French proposal was made to send Beijing a signal of EU unity.

The visit to Beijing scheduled for November 4 will make Scholz the first G7 leader to visit the country since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Instead of Macron, a delegation of German business leaders including chief executives of Volkswagen, BMW and Siemens accompanied the Chancellor on his trip.

Wang Yiwei, the director of the Centre for European Studies at Renmin University, said to Reuters, that Scholz was “testing the waters of the relationship between China and Germany, Europe, even the West. If this visit is successful, Macron will come a month later".

The visit comes after the German government gave China the green light to buy a stake in a Hamburg port terminal despite criticism from Scholz’s coalition partners and the US expressing their concerns.