China–Germany Relations (1912–1949)

China–Germany relations, also called Sino-German relations, are the international relations between China and Germany. Until 1914, the Germans leased concessions in China, including little parts of Yantai City and Qingdao on Shandong Peninsula. After World War I, during which the Germans lost all their leased territories in China, Sino-German relations gradually improved as German military advisers assisted the Kuomintang government's National Revolutionary Army, though this would change during the 1930s as Adolf Hitler gradually allied himself with Japan. During the aftermath of the Eastern Front (World War II), Germany was divided in two states: a liberal and democratic West Germany and a communist East Germany. Cold War tensions led to a West German alliance with the United States against communism and thus allied against the People's Republic of China (PRC). The Eastern part was allied through the Soviet Union with the PRC. After German reunification, relations between Germany and China improved.

History

Early contacts

Unlike Portugal or the Netherlands, German states were not involved, on the state level, in the early (16-17th centuries) contacts between Europe and China. Nonetheless, a number of individual Germans reached China at that time, in particular as Jesuit missionaries. Some of them played a significant role in China's history, as did Johann Adam Schall von Bell (in China in 1619–1666), who was in Beijing when it was taken by the Manchus in 1644, and soon became a trusted counselor of the early Qing leaders. Meanwhile, in Rome another German Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, who never got to go to China himself, used reports of other Jesuits in China to compile ''China Illustrata'', a work that was instrumental in popularizing knowledge about China among the 17th-century European readers.

The earliest Sino-German trade occurred overland through Siberia, and was subject to transit taxes by the Russian government. To make trading more profitable, Prussia decided to take the sea route, and the first German merchant ships arrived in Qing China, as part of the Royal Prussian Asian Trading Company of Emden in the 1750s. In 1861, after China's defeat in the Second Opium War, the Treaty of Tientsin was signed, which opened formal commercial relations between various European states, including Prussia, with China.

Early diplomatic relations

In 1859, following the Qing dynasty's defeat in the Second Opium War, Prussia sent the Eulenburg Expedition to negotiate commercial treaties with the Qing, the Empire of 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.

Due to the decisiveness of steam-powered fleets over the junks of the small Imperial Chinese Navy during China's conflicts with European powers in the mid-nineteenth century, the Chinese began a naval construction program in the 1880s to meet these threats more effectively. They enlisted British and German assistance, and two s were ordered from Germany, the '' Dingyuan'' and the '' Zhenyuan''.

In 1897, the German empire took advantage of the murder of two German missionaries to invade Qingdao and founded the Jiaozhou Bay colony. Germany took control of key points in the Shandong Peninsula. In 1898, it leased for 99 years Jiaozhou Bay and its port of Qingdao under threat of force. Development was a high priority for Berlin. Over 200 million marks were invested in world-class harbor facilities such as berths, heavy machinery, rail yards, and a floating dry dock. Private enterprise worked across the Shandong Province, opening mines, banks, breweries, factories, shops and rail lines. In 1900, Germany took part in the Eight-Nation Alliance that was sent to relieve the Siege of the International Legations in Beijing during the Boxer Uprising. China paid a large annual indemnity.

In 1907–1908, Kaiser Wilhelm II sent Prince of Bülow, Chancellor at the time, to discuss a potential treaty of triple alliance with the Qing high-ranking official Yuan and President Theodore Roosevelt. But it was overturned in favor of the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907 and due to the passing of Grand Empress Dowager, Cixi.

During the Xinhai revolution, revolutionaries killed a German arms dealer in Hankou as he was delivering arms to the Qing. Revolutionaries killed 2 Germans and wounded 2 other Germans at the battle of Hanyang, including a former colonel.

Early twentieth century

The German military had a major role in Republican China. 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. The Empire of Japan seized the German operations in 1914 after sharp battles. After World War I, the Weimar Republic provided extensive advisory services to the under Japan rule Republic of China, especially training for the Japanese led Chinese army.

As well as studying and visiting Japan, Germans visited and studied China in between the two World Wars.

Colonel General Hans von Seeckt, the former commander the German army, organized the training of Japanese led China's elite army units and the beginning civil war that included military activities against the Chinese Communists from 1933 to 1935. 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. According to some not confirmed sources in 1937, H.H. Kung visited Germany in an attempt "''to convince Hitler to side with China against Japan''". With assurances of the contrary Nazi Germany sided with the Japanese after they invaded China the following month and the last important German advisor left in 1938.

However, at the same time, the exiled German Communist Otto Braun was in China as a Comintern agent, probably sent in 1934, but most probably a double agent, to advise the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on military strategy and taking a major part in The Long March under a Chinese name, Li De (); it was only many years later that Otto Braun and "Li De" came to be known as the same person.

World War II (1941–1945)

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 the Japan set in the Second Sino-Japanese War forced Hitler to replace China with Japan as the Nazi's strategic ally in East Asia. Following the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Chinese declared war on Germany, which resulted in the Gestapo launching mass arrests of Chinese nationals across Germany. The very few Chinese in German-occupied Poland were also victims of Nazi Germany, with 13 deported from Warsaw to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in 1944. At the end of the war, the Chinese communities in cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen that existed before the war were destroyed.

Division of Germany and the Cold War (1945-1990)

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

The German Democratic Republic also managed to have good relations with the PRC, despite the Sino-Soviet Split that occurred for most of the Cold War until the 1989 Sino-Soviet Summit. Since the March 1982 speech on Sino-Soviet rapprochement by General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev to the Communist Party of Uzbekistan in Tashkent, Sino-East German relations began to steadily improve. In June 1986, Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian visited East Berlin in the highest-level Chinese delegation to Eastern Europe since the 1961 split. Moreover, Chairman Erich Honecker visited Beijing in early October 1986, where he was met by Chinese President Li Xiannian with in a welcoming ceremony on Tiananmen Square a military band and a marchpast by the People's Liberation Army honor guard. The visit became the first official visit by an Eastern Bloc leader to the PRC.

Reunified Germany (1990-present)

Early post-communism in united Germany

The frequent high-level diplomatic visits are acknowledged to have helped guarantee the smooth development of Sino-German relations. From 1993 to 1998, German and Chinese leaders met face-to-face 52 times: Among those Chinese leaders who visited Germany were Jiang Zemin, former General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party; Qiao Shi, former Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC); and Li Peng, former Premier of China and Chairman of the NPC Standing. Meanwhile, German leaders who visited China included President Roman Herzog, Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel

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