BAndes Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has angered the leadership in Beijing with sharp criticism of China’s threatening behavior towards Taiwan. The head of the European department at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Wang Lutong, officially protested to the new German ambassador in Beijing, Patricia Flor, on Tuesday. He spoke of “wrong comments” by Baerbock, as emerged from a tweet by the senior Chinese diplomat. The Taiwan question is an “internal matter of China”.
Baerbock traveled to New York on Monday to attend the NPT Review Conference. After her arrival, she had said: “We do not accept when international law is broken and a larger neighbor attacks its smaller neighbor in violation of international law – and that also applies to China, of course.” Baerbock added, referring to the “brutal Russian war of aggression”. against Ukraine, it is important to make it clear that the world community does not accept such behavior.
“China’s Taiwan remarks have raised serious questions”
On Tuesday, Baerbock followed up in a speech on transatlantic relations at a New York university. “We have learned painfully in the past few months since February 24 that aggressive rhetoric can lead to dangerous action,” she said. “China’s statements regarding Taiwan have raised serious questions.” Baerbock added: “It cannot be in our interest if China also creates sprawling economic dependencies in the region.”
Shortly before Baerbock’s statements on Tuesday, US top politician Nancy Pelosi landed on a visit to Taiwan. The stay of the Speaker of the US House of Representatives is the highest-ranking visit from the United States to the island’s democratic republic in a quarter of a century. Tensions with China had already escalated. The government in Beijing sees Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic. It firmly rejects official contacts from other countries to Taipei.
The actual topic of Baerbock’s speech in New York was the relationship between Europe and North America. The title: “Seizing the Transatlantic Moment: Our Common Responsibility in a New World”. Baerbock promoted a transatlantic “leadership partnership” based on three pillars: security cooperation, the rules-based international order and the strengthening of democracy. She stressed that ties between Europe and North America are “perhaps closer today than at any time since the end of the Cold War” in light of the Ukraine war.
In the speech, Baerbock supported the protest movement for abortion rights in the USA. The Green politician paid tribute to the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets in the United States for women’s rights. “As a wife and a mother of two, I wholeheartedly share her feelings,” Baerbock said. “Every woman has the right to make decisions about her own body.”
At the end of June, the Supreme Court – the highest court in the USA – overturned the right to abortion, which had existed for almost 50 years. Because there is no statewide law protecting the right to abortion, legislation now rests with the states. Republican-governed states in particular are trying to establish restrictive abortion laws as quickly as possible. Some of them were stopped again, at least temporarily, by local courts.
Baerbock ends her three-day North American tour on Wednesday with her inaugural visit to Canada. During her inaugural visit to Montreal, she will meet Secretary of State Melanie Joly. Canada is a NATO partner of Germany and belongs to the G7 of leading democratic economic powers. Germany currently chairs this group of states.
