Jake Saunders, Munich
For decades, German foreign policy rested on a clear premise: Germany belonged firmly in the Western camp, and its dealings with the rest of the world largely followed that alignment. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is openly challenging that foundation.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the party’s approach to China. Beijing is neither cast as an ideological adversary nor uncritically embraced. Instead, the AfD treats China as a sovereign great power, an essential economic partner, and one pole in an emerging multipolar order. Germany, in this view, should cooperate where its interests require it, defend itself where necessary, and refuse to subordinate its China policy to American strategy or European moralizing.
From a Taiwanese vantage point, this stance carries both pragmatic logic and latent risk. A Germany that prioritizes national interest over values-based confrontation could ease economic pressure on Beijing while diluting the broader Western consensus that has, however imperfectly, constrained Chinese assertiveness across the Taiwan Strait.
From Engagement to Strategic Realism
The AfD’s 2021 foreign-policy platform already framed China’s Belt and Road Initiative as a “century project” and urged Germany to participate actively, including by building complementary East-West connections. The logic was straightforward: if China is constructing Eurasian infrastructure, Germany should shape it to serve German interests rather than stand aside and criticize.
By 2023 the tone had hardened into geopolitics. When the German government released its China Strategy, senior AfD figure Petr Bystron denounced it as an attempt to import American confrontation into German diplomacy. That same year, an AfD parliamentary delegation led by Alice Weidel, Peter Felser and Bystron visited Shanghai and Beijing. Their conclusion was unambiguous: China had become too central to Germany’s prosperity for confrontation to remain a viable option. Felser rejected both “de-risking” and decoupling, arguing that German-Chinese trade was simply too large to sacrifice to geopolitical fashion.
The party’s 2025 federal election program at Riesa locked in this direction. China is described as a major economic partner; Germany is told to safeguard its own technological and security interests. Opportunities linked to the Belt and Road are to be exploited, yet Berlin should not subsidize a country that is already an economic heavyweight.
Realpolitik over Moralpolitik
The deepest divergence between the AfD and Germany’s establishment is less about China itself than about the purpose of foreign policy. The AfD favors classic realpolitik in the German national interest over moralpolitik. It endorses non-interference in other states’ internal affairs and rejects what it calls presumptuous lecturing and destabilizing intervention.
Human-rights criticism is not treated as the organizing principle of relations with Beijing. This does not require pretending every Chinese policy is admirable; it does require refusing to condition ties with a major sovereign power on Berlin’s approval of its domestic system. Western governments, the party argues, should stop acting as the world’s political schoolmasters.
The AfD is not uncritical. It has flagged Chinese economic practices, strategic dependencies, technology transfers, and the risks of excessive state control over digital infrastructure. The position is not “China is always right.” It is “China is sovereign. Germany is sovereign. Deal with each other as such.”
For Taiwan, the distinction matters. A European power that de-emphasizes values and systemic competition may prove less reliable when Beijing intensifies pressure on the island. Sovereignty rhetoric that treats all great powers as equals can quietly erode the normative space in which smaller democracies seek support.
Partnership Without Dependence
The AfD wants deeper economic engagement while simultaneously warning against excessive reliance on China. Felser, now chairman of the German-Chinese Parliamentary Group, has repeatedly stressed both sides. In early 2026 he called China “by no means our enemy” but an “important partner,” while insisting Germany must protect its Mittelstand and secure fair competition. Later he highlighted dangerous dependence in strategic technologies and raw materials, contrasting German weakness with China’s systematic push for technological self-sufficiency. By mid-year he cautioned against a trade war, arguing that tariffs are no substitute for negotiation. By September the argument had sharpened further: reduce strategic dependence not by decoupling, but by making Germany stronger—through lower taxes, less bureaucracy, and cheaper energy. China is not the problem; German weakness is.
This formula—more trade, less vulnerability—sounds pragmatic in Berlin. From Taipei it looks more ambiguous. A stronger, more self-confident Germany that still seeks commercial upside with Beijing could quietly prioritize industrial interests over solidarity with Taiwan when crises arise.
The Weidel Factor and Beijing’s Comfort Zone
Alice Weidel personifies the approach. She studied in China, speaks Mandarin, and has professional experience there—an unusual combination among senior European politicians. She approaches the country neither as an exotic threat nor as an ideological abstraction, but as a place she knows firsthand.
Beijing can live with this version of German policy more easily than with the moralized language still dominant in Berlin and Brussels. The AfD does not demand ideological conversion, does not condition relations on domestic political change, and explicitly rejects interference. At the same time it seeks reciprocity: market access for German firms, protection of intellectual property, retention of strategic industries, fair competition, and reduced dependence on critical Chinese inputs. These are the terms of national-interest politics that Beijing understands and can negotiate.
Multipolarity as Doctrine
China is only one piece. The AfD’s broader innovation is a genuine commitment to multipolarity. China shows that a major state can pursue independent industrial strategy, defend its interests, reject Western conditionality, and revive civilizational confidence. Russia is treated as another pole. The United States remains indispensable, yet closeness to Donald Trump’s Republicans does not require automatic alignment with every American preference—including confrontation with China.
The consistent principle is that Germany should have friends, partners, and alliances, but also a foreign policy of its own.
Europe’s Choice, Taiwan’s Concern
Because Germany is the economic core of the European Union, a shift in Berlin’s understanding of China will not stop at the German border. A Germany that pursues pragmatic relations with Beijing, Moscow, and Washington simultaneously would challenge assumptions that have guided Europe for decades. A Germany that rejects automatic decoupling could force the continent to reassess whether confrontation truly serves its economic interests. A Germany that places national sovereignty and multipolarity at the center of foreign policy could recalibrate the balance among Berlin, Brussels, and Washington.
The AfD’s stance is not about choosing China over America. It is about rejecting the premise that Germany must choose at all. It is national, realist, and multipolar without apology.
If the party eventually governs, the consequences for Europe could be among the most consequential in generations. A sovereign Germany engaging China on its own terms might help Europe confront the world as it is rather than as liberal utopians once wished it to remain. For Taiwan, that same development would require careful watching: a more independent Germany could mean a less predictable Europe—one less automatically aligned with the security concerns of a democracy living under the shadow of a rising authoritarian power.
