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Jun Mai

During her many trips to China as German chancellor, Angela Merkel frequently took the time to meet liberals and hear voices critical of Beijing.
He Weifang, a law professor at Peking University, was at one of those meetings, back in 2010.
“She listened very carefully to each of us talking about China’s situation and how to improve it,” He said. “And she showed deep concern for the situation faced by intellectuals, human rights lawyers and journalists.”
After hearing from the four academics at that meeting in Beijing, Merkel spoke about her childhood in East Germany, how her father solemnly said goodbye to the family every morning, not knowing if he would be back.
“She also tried to comfort us by saying ‘China doesn’t seem that bad at the moment’,” said He, a leading advocate for judicial independence.
It was one of a number of meetings with liberals in China hosted by Merkel, who is preparing to step down as German chancellor after 16 years.
She will leave office at a time when relations between Europe and China are at a low point, and as she faces criticism for being too soft on Beijing, both on human rights and geopolitical issues.
For Chinese liberals and activists, she is known for her deep personal involvement in human rights – though for them, her emphasis on trade ties with Beijing was also disagreeable.

Early on in her chancellorship, in 2007, Merkel met the Dalai Lama in Berlin. She did so against the advice of her then foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the move enraged Beijing, which sees the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader as a separatist.
Three years later, she gave a speech at the Central Party School in Beijing, where officials are trained, telling cadres that there comes a time when every country ceases to see difference as a threat, but rather as part of the human condition.
Merkel has visited China 12 times during her long reign as chancellor – something critics of her China policy have seized on – and met liberals and dissidents in person during most of the trips.
Law professor He said given that the German chancellor would have been on a tight schedule, “these arrangements underlined her personal concern about China’s human rights and legal issues”.
He also highlighted Merkel’s efforts negotiating for the 2018 departure from China of Liu Xia, the widow of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Before she left for Berlin, where she now lives, poet and artist Liu Xia had been under de facto house arrest for years and was never charged with any crime.
During Merkel’s visit to Beijing the same year, she met the wives of two human rights lawyers who were campaigning for the release of their husbands, both of whom were in secret detention at the time and later jailed for subversion.

Zhan Jiang, a retired journalism professor and long-time advocate for press freedom, met Merkel in Beijing twice, in 2007 and again in 2008.
“The fact that she came to listen to us said a lot about how much she cares for civil society in China,” Zhan said. “But I think liberal intellectuals have become disappointed by her as too much emphasis has been placed on business interests.”
He, the law professor, agreed.
“Over the years … I sense that Chancellor Merkel is still trying to improve China’s human rights in a gradual way but obviously the reliance on China’s market has weakened action on that front,” he said.
Merkel’s push for closer trade ties with China has troubled some Chinese liberals, according to Wu Yangwei, a dissident writer in Guangzhou. He said her support for an EU-China investment deal – which was suspended in May after an exchange of sanctions over Beijing’s alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang – had a particularly negative impact on how she was perceived.
But for Wu, Merkel still stands out for her efforts on human rights in China.
“She has made a lot of effort on this front and it’s true that we don’t see the US president or other heads of government meeting dissidents when they are in China,” Wu said.
“We will remember this – that there was a German chancellor who made these efforts, even if they weren’t enough to turn things around.”


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Outgoing German chancellor met academics and dissidents on nearly all her trips to China
Law professor says discussions showed her personal concern for human rights and legal issues



Outgoing German chancellor met academics and dissidents on nearly all her trips to China.


Germany

China-EU relations

China-EU investment deal

Human rights in China

‘She listened’: Chinese liberals reflect on conversations with Angela Merkel

Outgoing German chancellor met academics and dissidents on nearly all her trips to China Law professor says discussions showed her personal concern for human rights and legal issues

Outgoing German chancellor met academics and dissidents on nearly all her trips to China

Law professor says discussions showed her personal concern for human rights and legal issues