China’s Prime Minister Li Qiang knows how to brush off his visitors in a nice way. On April 16, the Great Hall of the People was decorated with flags and bouquets of flowers. It seemed as if Li and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were about to announce something big.

"China is happy to import more high-quality German products," said Li. He added that import restrictions would be lifted for "beef and apples from Germany." China, in return, is hoping that Germany will allow more Chinese high-tech products into the country.

Food in exchange for e-cars? That was the result of a three-day visit to China?

Scholz listened motionlessly as Li portrayed China as a high-tech country and Germany as an agricultural state. Chancellor Scholz had traveled to Beijing to talk about war and peace. He returned with an agreement on goods from German lands.

Beef and apples. That says a lot about Germany’s importance on the world stage.

Rarely before has a German government been so keen to contain wars and prevent new ones. Rarely before has the situation for Germany and Europe been as serious as it is today. Ukraine seems to be running out of steam in the fight against Russia’s invading forces. And Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel is threatening to turn into a major war in the Middle East.

Foreign Policy?

Germany, the richest and most populous country in the European Union, can’t simply stand by and watch its neighbors slide into chaos. So, the chancellor travels to Beijing and asks Chinese President Xi Jinping to talk some sense into his friend Vladimir Putin. At the same time, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius are sending letters to countries around the world pleading for weapons to protect Ukraine. Shortly afterwards, Baerbock flies to Israel to stop Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from launching a risky counter-strike on Iran. Meanwhile, her Green Party colleague, Economics Minister Robert Habeck, is traveling to Kyiv on an overnight train, where he is once again pledging German support. And all of this within just a few days.

For years, leading politicians have been talking about the need for Germany to take on more responsibility internationally. But do all these trips, initiatives and talks really achieve anything? Is this an effective foreign policy or is it just action for the sake of action?

If you take a close look at this fast-paced shuttle diplomacy, you get the impression that Germany is hardly being listened to in the world.

But diplomacy isn’t a sport, its results often can’t be measured and quick successes are rare. Those looking for signs of progress have to peer very closely. And listen. Sometimes, it also requires a bit of imagination.

During the chancellor’s trip to China, Scholz’s companions went to great lengths to interpret every sign of recognition, however small, and every concession, however veiled, as a success. They proudly announced that President Xi Jinping had spent almost three and a half hours with the chancellor. And they noted that he had listened more than during Scholz’s last visit in November 2022 and seemed less aggressive. Has the communist leadership in Beijing had enough of Putin’s war?

There was a lot of hope, but little that was tangible.

Chinese politicians are often difficult for Germans to interpret. They like to express themselves in flowery, poetic language. It often sounds very nice, but it also tends to be non-binding. When Scholz spoke to President Xi about the Russian war of aggression, Xi is reported to have said: "It’s important that everyone sits at the same table and no one is on the menu." Some members of the German delegation interpreted the statement as a show of solidarity with Ukraine and a condemnation of the Russian invasion. In other words: a success.

But there’s also another possible way of reading it. The sentence can also be understood as a warning to the West not to exclude Russian from future rounds of negotiations, to not put it on the "menu." China’s leadership has yet to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, nor does it speak of a "war."

Ultimately, the second interpretation is likely more accurate than the first.

As far as the Chinese are concerned, it’s fine for the war in Ukraine to continue and to keep Europe on tenterhooks. According to a statement released by the Chinese Foreign Ministry shortly after the meeting, it supports convening an international peace conference held at "an appropriate time" that ensures "the equal participation of all parties." Beijing clearly has little interest in talks such as those planned in Switzerland in June that do not include Russia.

But what sounds like vague political talk is actually a defeat for Scholz. He wanted to persuade Xi to send a Chinese representative to Switzerland. With the Chinese at the table, the thinking goes, it might be possible to get Putin to send a negotiator. But nothing even close to that happened. Xi didn’t give him anything.

A Double Rebuff in Beijing

Scholz also got rebuffed on his second important request: He wanted China to cease exporting goods to Russia that are intended for the civilian market but are also used to keep the Russian war machine running. But Xi apparently didn’t respond to the criticism. It is reported that he replied evasively, almost mockingly.

Germany has the third largest economy in the world, but do its words mean anything?

The parties in Schulz’s coalition government had set out to establish a far-sighted and strategic foreign policy. After lengthy internal wrangling over it, the government in Berlin presented a national security strategy, a China strategy and several others. The papers create the impression that the government has a toolbox for diplomacy, like instruction manuals for a confusing world.

But reality cannot be predicted. Israel is only briefly mentioned in the close to 80-page National Security Strategy. It states that Germany assumes "responsibility for Israel’s right to exist." When the document was published almost a year ago, nobody in Berlin suspected that the terrorist organization Hamas would attack Israel or that it would come under a direct attack by its arch-enemy Iran. And now? What does "responsibility for Israel’s right to exist" mean in concrete terms?

Foreign Minister Baerbock seems to have found an answer to this: travel a lot, make a lot of phone calls. But with what result?

During a long conversation the week before last, she warned her Iranian counterpart Hossein Amirabdollahian against an attack on Israel – to no avail. Last week, she traveled to Israel for the seventh time since the beginning of the Gaza war. She urged Netanyahu’s government to show restraint. She said Israel should not stand down, but it should show "prudence and restraint." After the talks with the German foreign minister, Netanyahu stated he was getting "all kinds of suggestions and advice" from his allies. "I would also like to clarify – we will make our decisions ourselves." Baerbock’s warning went unheeded.

Still, her trip may have succeeded in achieving something to improve the aid for the people living in the Gaza Strip. The fact that Israel has announced that it will allow more aid supplies into Gaza is viewed within the German government as evidence of the success of Baerbock’s persistence in recent weeks.

But can Germany prevent an expansion of the war in the region? "In the Middle East, it’s the words U.S.A. that count the most," says Guntram Wolff, a researcher at Bruegel, a think tank in Brussels, and professor at the Willy Brandt School at the University of Erfurt. "They were the ones who took Iranian drones and missiles out of the sky for Israel, not the Germans."

Wolff believes the government in Berlin is indulging in an illusion. "Germany wrongly views itself as a major geopolitical player," he says. But in fact, he argues, Germany is currently losing its reputation and influence around the world. "Its huge solidarity with Israel, which is perceived as biased in many places, is one reason for this. Another is the weak growth of the German economy," the economist says.

Wolff monitored Scholz’s trip to China closely. His takeaway: "Leaders like Xi know how to exploit German vanity to their own advantage." He points to the long talks and the quotes from German philosophers with which Chinese politicians pepper their remarks in the presence of Germans. But he says Germans should not allow themselves to be blinded.

"The chancellor made a mistake in China," says Wolff. He argues that Scholz could have achieved more if he had brought not only Germany’s weight to bear, but also that of the European Union. "Germany is overestimating its foreign policy if it believes it can do without the EU. On trade issues, especially, it’s not the chancellor who ultimately has the say, but the EU," says Wolff.

So far, though, Scholz hasn’t come across as a huge champion of Brussels. When Scholz talks about the EU, the meetings with leaders of other EU countries and the European Commission’s decision-making processes, he often sounds distant, sometimes patronizing. It seems that Berlin and Brussels are separated by more than just the 650 kilometers distance between them.

"Scholz still hasn’t shed his image of being a procrastinator," says one diplomat from another EU country. He argues that it’s an unfair image given that Germany is now providing much greater support to Ukraine than any other European country. France and Britain, for example, supplied significantly fewer weapons – "but they did so early on and with a high profile," the diplomat says. "The first impression has a lasting effect."

Scholz appears to have learned from it. The German chancellor used his government’s decision last week to supply Ukraine with a third "Patriot" air defense system to put pressure on the other 26 EU states at a summit in Brussels on April 17. He argued that they should do the same as Germany and also strengthen Ukraine’s air defenses. The chancellor advised fellow EU leaders to "go home and look and see: What’s possible?" And quickly, "not at some point."