Like all leaders who stay on too long, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has left her successor with an inbox of unfinished business—but also with opportunities to revise policies that have outlived their usefulness. Nowhere is that better illustrated than in Germany’s moribund strategy toward China.
Early on, Merkel was nimble and self-confident in dealing with China. She quickly made China one of her foreign policy priorities: she visited China just six months after taking office in late 2005, the first of 12 visits, more than all her predecessors combined. That made China her most visited country after Russia, the United States, and Germany’s European neighbors.
