Germany–Taiwan relations

Taiwanese–German relations

Taiwan	Germany

In 1861, Prussia and the Qing dynasty signed the first Sino-German treaty during the Eulenburg Expedition. Ten years later, the German Empire was founded and the new state inherited the old Prussian treaty. The relations remained cold, with Germany joining imperialist powers like Russia, Great Britain and France in carving out spheres of influence in the Chinese empire.

The Germans also participated in the crushing of the Boxer Rebellion. Follpwing World War I, relations gradually improved as German military advisers assisted the Kuomintang nationalist government's National Revolutionary Army, though this would gradually change during the 1930s as Adolf Hitler allied himself with Japan. During the aftermath of World War II Germany and China were split in two states: a liberal democratic West Germany and the Republic of China on Taiwan allied with the Western Bloc while two communist states, East Germany and the People's Republic of China supported by the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War tensions led to Nationalist China and West Germany's alliance with the United States against communism and thus allied against Communist China with the Eastern part was allied through the Soviet Union.

West Germany established diplomatic relations with the Republic of China in 1955. After recognizing the People's Republic of China in 1972, the two countries maintain unofficial diplomatic relations.

History[]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (August 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Origins[]

The earliest Sino-German trading occurred overland through Siberia, and was subject to transit taxes by the Imperial Russian government. In order to make trading more profitable, German traders took the sea route and the first German merchant ships arrived in China, then under the Qing Dynasty, as part of the Royal Prussian Asian Trading Company of Emden, in the 1750s.

Early years[]

In 1859, following China's loss in the Second Opium War, Prussia sent the Eulenburg Expedition to negotiate commercial treaties with China, Japan and Siam. On 2 September 1861, Friedrich Albrecht zu Eulenburg and a representative from the Zongli Yamen signed the Treaty of Tianjin, which opened formal commercial relations between China and Prussia, which represented the German Customs Union. Prussia would later on become the dominant and leading part of the newly founded German empire. The treaty would govern Sino-German relations until World War I, when the Republic of China repudiated the treaty unilaterally.

During the late 19th century, Sino-foreign trade was dominated by the British Empire, and Otto von Bismarck was eager to establish German footholds in China to balance the British dominance. In 1885, Bismarck had the Reichstag pass a steamship subsidy bill which offered direct service to China. In the same year, he sent the first German banking and industrial survey group to evaluate investment possibilities, which led to the establishment of the Deutsch-Asiatische Bank in 1890. Through these efforts, Germany was second to Britain in trading and shipping in China by 1896.

By this time, the island of Taiwan was ruled by the Qing from 1683 as part of Fujian before becoming an independent province in 1885. However, after the First Sino–Japanese War, China ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 by the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

Since Taiwan opened its ports for foreign trade in mid-19th century, German trade companies began establishing presence on the island. It was a time when Southern harbor cities such as Dagou (Kaohsiung) and Anping (Tainan) were preferred over their Northern counterparts, Tamsui and Keelung, for trading business.^[1]

The German Empire opened the consulate in the Tamsui River in 1895. It was closed in 1908 by the Imperial Japanese government.^[2]

In 1896, the undersecretary of state of the Foreign Office, Hara Takashi, considered turning the new colony into an extension of the Japanese metropole, modeled on the examples of the relationship between Alsace-Lorraine and Germany as well as that between Algeria and France. By contrast Gotō Shinpei held the view that, racially, the Taiwanese were highly dissimilar from the Japanese in the metropole and that for this reason the island of Taiwan had to have a different administrative structure. In 1898, Gotō was appointed head of the civil administration of the colonial government of Taiwan and, as a result, the “laissez-faire” assimilation policy prevailed.^[3]

However, the colonial government interests in the German relations did not disappear immediately. One year later, Sakatani Yoshirō, a member of Taiwan Association, proposed to establish a Japanese university in Taiwan, referring to the University of Strasbourg, although it was not met with approval in government circles. Moreover, the first recorded Japanese delegation to Alsace-Lorraine was represented by a civil servant of the Taiwanese colonial government who visited schools and state institutions, such as courts of justice, prisons, and city administration in 1900. Thirty years later, this official, Ishizuka Eizō, became the governor of Taiwan. However, after this visit, no other delegation related to the colonial government in Taiwan was sent to Alsace-Lorraine. ^[3]

Nationalist–German cooperation[]

The German military had a major role in China.^[4] The German Navy's East Asia Squadron was in charge of Germany's concessions at Qingdao, and spent heavily to set up modern facilities that would be a showcase for Asia. Japan seized the German operations in 1914 after sharp battles. After World War I, the German republic provided extensive advisory services to the Republic of China, especially training for the Chinese army. Colonel General Hans von Seeckt, the former commander the German army, organized the training of China's elite army units and the fight against communists in 1933-1935.^[5] All military academies had German officers, as did most army units. In addition, German engineers provided expertise and bankers provided loans for China's railroad system. Trade with Germany flourished in the 1920s, with Germany as China's largest supplier of government credit.

At the period, China was fraught with factional warlordism and foreign incursions. The Northern Expedition (1928) nominally unified China under Kuomintang (KMT) control, but Imperial Japan loomed as the greatest foreign threat. The Chinese urgency for modernising its military and national defence industry, coupled with Germany's need for a stable supply of raw materials, put China and the German Weimar Republic on the road of close relations from the late 1920s onwards. That continued for a time following the rise in Germany of the Nazis. However, intense co-operation lasted only until the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937. The German co-operation nevertheless had a profound effect on the modernisation of China and its ability to resist the Japanese during the war.

Sino-German cooperation collapsed in 1939 due to the start of World War II in Europe, forcing many Chinese nationals to leave Germany due to increased government surveillance and coercion. The example Japan set in the Second Sino-Japanese War forced Hitler to replace China with Japan as the Nazi's strategic ally in East Asia.^[6] Following the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, China had declared war on Germany, which resulted in the Gestapo launching massive arrests of Chinese nationals across Germany. At the end of the war, the Chinese communities in cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen that existed before the war were destroyed.

Post-World War II[]

After the war, Taiwan was reverted to the Republic of China and Germany was placed under Allied occupation. However, with the onset of the Cold War, the Federal Republic of Germany or West Germany initially did not recognize the People's Republic of China primarily because of its hard-line anti-communist foreign policy of the Hallstein Doctrine but still maintained diplomatic relations with the Republic of China which fled to Taiwan in 1949 after they were defeated in the Chinese Civil War.

West Germany formally supported the One-China policy, in hopes of finding Chinese backing of the reunification of Germany. In 1972, West Germany officially established diplomatic contacts with the PRC, although unofficial contacts had been in existence since 1964.^[7][8][9]

Recent history[]

In 2020 a diplomatic spat arose between the two countries when the German Foreign Ministry removed the Taiwanese flag from a page describing bilateral relations.^[10]

In 2020 Daniela Kluckert voiced her support for stronger relations with Taiwan.^[11]

In January 2021 the German government appealed to the Taiwanese government to help persuade Taiwanese semiconductor companies to ramp up production as a global semiconductor shortage was hampering the German economy's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. A lack of semiconductors had caused vehicle production lines to be idled leading German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier to personally reach out to Taiwan's economics affairs minister Wang Mei-hua in an attempt to get Taiwanese semiconductor companies to increase their manufacturing capacity.^[12] In response Wang Mei-hua sought Germany’s help in securing vaccines against COVID-19.^[13]

In July 2021 Germany and Taiwan signed an agreement expanding air traffic between the two countries. Weekly passenger flights were increased from 7 to 12 and cargo flights were increased from three to five with fifth freedom rights.^[14]

In July 2021 German Representative in Taiwan Thomas Prinz was awarded Taiwan's Grand Medal of Diplomacy.^[15]

In October 2021 a tweet from the Global Times which called for a “final solution to the Taiwan question” was condemned by Frank Müller-Rosentritt of the Free Democratic Party for its similarity to the “final solution to the Jewish question” which resulted in the Holocaust.^[16]

In December 2021 the Bundestag passed a resolution calling on the government to expand ties and cooperation with Taiwan.^[17]

Representative offices[]

German Institute Taipei[]

The German Institute holds an annual Oktoberfest celebration.^[18]

Taipei Representative Office in the Federal Republic of Germany[]

See also[]

• Netherlands-Taiwan relations
• Foreign relations of Taiwan
• Foreign relations of Germany
• Taiwan–European Union relations

References[]