22.05.2024

Dr. Jens Damm: China and Germany Relations since 2021: Between Continuity and Increasing Confrontation

29th May, 12-14h c.t.; Keplerstr. 2, Room 1.81. All are welcome.

Dr. Jens Damm’s presentation analyses China-Germany relations focusing on official German statements such as 2021 election programmes, party manifestos, the German China strategy and the reaction of the various parties. Furthermore, it is followed by examining media reports focusing on several topics such as the 2021 election, the War in Ukraine and visits of high-ranking German politicians to China.

The underlying paper is an update of his chapter “China and Germany After the 2021 Election: Between Continuity and Increasing Confrontation” in Simona A. Grano, David Wei and Feng Huang's (eds.) China-US Competition: Impact on Small and Middle Powers' Strategic Choices, Palgrave 2023. In his chapter, he analysed the political changes faced by Germany, the European Union’s most important player, and the fragmented and contrasting positions in the German political as well as academic environment, when it comes to China or the United States.

All the while Germany’s economic dependence on China is evaluated as one of the key factors influencing the internal debate, given that China has been Germany’s most important commercial partner since 2015, making the country’s strategic options between the two hegemons quite difficult. He also included a part asking to what degree German-Taiwan relations are impacted by the changes in China-German relations.

Biography

Dr. phil. Jens Damm, Associate Fellow at ERCCT Tübingen, is Lecturer at the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Institute of Chinese Studies. From February 2025 he will be the visiting chair of Taiwan Studies at the University of Leiden. He was an Associate Professor at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan Studies, Chang Jung University, Tainan, Taiwan (2009-2019) and an Assistant Professor at Freie Universität Berlin until 2009. His research interests include the new media and the Internet, the Taiwanese and Chinese diasporas, and gender studies. He was also PI of “China's Cultural Diplomacy and the Role of Non-state Actors”, 2015-2017 (GARC) at the Oriental Institute Prague. His most recent publications include:

(2024) Politics and the Media, in: Gunter Schubert (Hrsg.) Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Taiwan, Routledge (accepted)
(2024) Contested and Negotiated Discourses: Media Framing of Homosexuality Issues in Taiwan, in: Ming-yeh Rawnsley and Yiben Ma (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Chinese Media. Routledge (accepted). 
(2023) With Simona Grano. „Ein Land, zwei Systeme“: Hongkong und Taiwan. In Nele Noesselt (ed.) China: Geographien einer Weltmacht. Springer. 
(2023) With Julia Marinaccio. Taiwan’s Enduring Controversy on Absentee Voting. Journal of Democracy (under review).