Merkel to tackle trade, climate / Germany's Merkel sets off on weeklong tour of China, Japan / Merkel to press China on human rights
Four newer stories that are related to the earlier batch (updated originally to add the one from VOA; updated further, on Monday, to reflect a newer version of the BBC story on the source page):
(Newer stories will appear in a subsequent post.)
From the BBC...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has urged China to address the issue of climate change, as she starts a three-day visit to the country.
But China said that it was still catching up economically, making it harder to reduce emissions.
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said [that] developed nations have contributed more to climate change, because they have been growing fast for 200 years.
China, which has boomed economically, has seen a sharp rise in pollution.
'Green hills'
As an economic powerhouse, China - which saw its stocks hit another record close [on] Monday, to 5,150.12 - has been much criticised for contributing to climate change.
But China says [that] it should be allowed to grow economically, as others have done already.
"The Chinese wish, like all people, for blue skies, green hills, and clear water," Mr Wen said at a news conference.
He added: "China has taken part of the responsibility for climate change for only 30 years, while industrial countries have grown fast for the last 200 years," he said.
Ms Merkel has been keen to push climate change on the international agenda, and wants rapidly growing countries such as China to have a role in fighting global warming.
While China declared its first national plan to tackle climate change in June [of] this year, it also said [that] it would not want the problem addressed at the expense of economic development.
China is not obliged to meet targets that apply to developed nations under the UN-backed Kyoto protocol, which runs until 2012 and is the main international framework for reducing greenhouse emissions.
Ms Merkel's visit comes as hundreds of delegates in Vienna are addressing climate change.
Representatives from government, industry and science are gathered in the Austrian city for a five-day meeting to debate how to reduce emissions.
'Computers hacked'
On the eve of Ms Merkel's arrival in China, Beijing rejected reports in a German news magazine that hackers with links to China's military had infiltrated German government computers.
A foreign-ministry spokesman in Beijing said that China "has always been against, and strictly opposes, the criminal action of hacking and harming computer systems".
The German government has not commented on reports in Der Spiegel which said that computers at the chancellery and three ministries had been infected with viruses.
According to the magazine, German's domestic-intelligence agency believes [that] hackers linked to China's People's Liberation Army might be behind the attacks.
Ms Merkel's visit to China coincides with the publication of a report saying that China needs to do more to improve protection of intellectual property and develop its technology.
Developing innovation is a prerequisite to escape from "a pattern of specialisation characterised by intensive low-skilled labour and natural resources," said the report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
It said [that] enforcement of laws, especially locally, needed to be substantially improved.
It is also expected that Mrs Merkel will address human-rights issues, notably in Sudan - an ally of China's - as well as intellectual property.
Ms Merkel is scheduled on Wednesday to head to Japan, which replaces Germany as the head of the G8 group of richest nations [sic] in 2008.
She is expected to meet Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo.
From the AP...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in China on Sunday on the first leg of a weeklong Asian tour, with climate change, human rights, and economic ties among the issues topping her agenda.
Also Sunday, China rejected a news report that Chinese hackers linked to the military were responsible for infecting computers in Germany's government, a sensitive issue ahead of Merkel's visit.
The German weekly Der Spiegel, which did not specify its sources, reported in its edition published [on] Sunday that German security agencies had found that computers at the chancellery and three ministries had been infected with so-called Trojans, or spy programs, from China.
It said [that] the country's domestic-intelligence agency believed that a group of hackers associated with China's People's Liberation Army might be behind the alleged hacking.
But Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for China's Foreign Ministry, said that Beijing "has always been against, and strictly opposes, the criminal action of hacking and harming computer systems."
"The relevant laws of China clearly stipulate this," Jiang said in a brief statement posted on the ministry's Web site.
"China and other countries have established good cooperation mechanisms to strike against hacking," she said. "China is willing to strengthen cooperation with Germany on the issue."
German government officials refused to comment on the report in Der Spiegel. Interior Ministry spokesman Christian Guenter Sachs said that, in general terms, hacker attacks are a constant problem, but that no damage had been caused by them so far.
Merkel was to meet President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday, and planned to visit the former capital of Nanjing before flying to Japan on Wednesday.
In Japan, Merkel is to visit Kyoto, which gave its name to the current protocol limiting greenhouse-gas emissions — underlining her push for a new global agreement to combat climate change, once that pact expires in 2012.
Merkel, whose country holds the presidency of the Group of Eight industrialized nations [sic], has been lobbying for the accord, which nations are to begin negotiating at U.N.-sponsored talks in December. Japan will chair the G-8 next year.
At the German-hosted G-8 summit in June, leaders agreed to "seriously consider" proposals to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by 50 percent by 2050 — nonbinding language that was a compromise between the EU, which wants mandatory cuts, and the United States, which opposes them.
Merkel is eager for fast-rising economic powers, and polluters, such as China to join in future efforts against global warming.
Currently, developing countries such as China and India are exempt from Kyoto's obligations — part of the reason why both the U.S. and Australia have refused to join.
Merkel, who is making her second visit to China as chancellor, made clear before her departure that she would not shy away from awkward issues.
When she last visited in May 2006, she said [that] she had discussed China's human-rights record, and called it an "important issue of bilateral dialogue."
"We have such close economic relations with each other, such close political relations, that we naturally also can discuss questions that are perhaps contentious — human rights, product quality; all of that is discussed in open dialogue," Merkel said [on] Saturday in her weekly video podcast.
"China has very close relations with Africa, and we naturally will speak about how we can combat the terrible human-rights violations in Sudan, in the Darfur region," she said.
China has been accused of not doing enough to stop the bloodshed in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million others [have been] displaced since February 2003.
After resisting calls for intervention, China dispatched a special envoy and lobbied Sudan to accept a United Nations peacekeeping force.
Angela Merkel will use a visit to China starting on Monday to press Beijing to take on greater international responsibility concerning intellectual property rights, climate change, and human rights in Africa.
China has “very close ties with Africa”, the German chancellor said before departure yesterday [Saturday] for the three-day visit, and for this reason she would urge Beijing to help “combat the appalling human-rights violations in Sudan’s Darfur region”.
China has significant economic interests in Sudan, but has been largely resistant to external pressure to take a more-critical approach towards Khartoum over the war-torn Darfur region.
Her tough comments were seen on Sunday as part of an effort by Ms Merkel to use a string of foreign trips in the next two months to reinforce her image as an international powerbroker, following her foreign-policy successes in the European Union and [the] G8 industrial-nations grouping [sic] in the first half of 2007.
Her week-long Asia trip includes her first visit as chancellor to Japan, where she will deliver a keynote speech in Kyoto on the urgency of tackling climate change.
In September, she will represent Germany at the United Nations General Assembly meeting – a job traditionally performed by the foreign minister – and in October she will make a rare visit by a German chancellor to Africa, visiting Ethiopia, South Africa and Liberia.
India and south-east Asia are also on the agenda of the globe-trotting chancellor, who this month squeezed in a visit to Greenland – the first by a German leader – to highlight her environmental worries.
Pollsters note that Ms Merkel’s standing as Germany’s most-popular politician is linked partly to her high international profile and her skill in wringing pragmatic compromises from the EU on its stalled constitution, and from the G8 on climate change.
The chancellor appears determined to maintain her strong poll ratings, even though – following the end of Berlin’s EU presidency – Germany’s political focus is set to return to more-mundane domestic concerns.
Her interest in foreign affairs may also be linked to the rising popularity within the Social Democrats, her coalition ally, of the foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and the political challenge [that] he may pose following his decision to play a stronger role in domestic politics.
Yet according to Sabine Rosenbladt, editor of Internationale Politik, a German foreign-affairs journal, [in order] for Ms Merkel’s foreign success record to continue, she will “have to focus on delivering on the promises made” for instance at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm.
In this context, Ms Merkel’s visits to Asia this week, and later to Africa, “will need to lead to more-concrete results”, she added. Aides to Ms Merkel said [that] she hoped [that] China would make clearer how it will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Analysts note however that Beijing remained cautious in its contacts with Ms Merkel, who has been more overtly critical of China than her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder.
In a move unlikely to improve relations, the chancellor has scheduled for tomorrow a Beijing meeting with activists and independent writers to address concern over media and internet freedom in China.
Ms Merkel also plans to raise China’s “responsibility to protect intellectual property rights”, aides said.
Her departure on Sunday was overshadowed by a report in Der Spiegel magazine that, in recent months, computers in key German government ministries and the chancellery had been infected by spying programmes launched by Chinese state-backed hackers possibly linked to the Chinese military. Ms Merkel refused to comment, but said [that] worries over IPR issues featured “very strongly” in talks with China.
From VOA...
German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in China late [on] Sunday for a three-day visit, with violence in Sudan's Darfur region, climate change, human rights, and economic ties expected to be high on the agenda.
Ms. Merkel is scheduled to meet [on] Monday with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, in Beijing, and [to] press them for more help in ending violence in Darfur.
Before her departure, she also made clear that she would not shy away from other pressing issues, such as China's human-rights record and reduction of greenhouse gases.
Also Sunday, Chinese officials rejected a German news report, in Der Spiegel, that computer hackers with ties to the Chinese army had infected key German-government computer systems, including Ms. Merkel's office, with spy programs.
China's Foreign Ministry said [that] Beijing strictly opposes and prohibits criminal action of hacking and harming computer systems. It said that China hopes to strengthen cooperation with Germany on the overall problem of computer crime.
This is Ms. Merkel's second trip to Beijing as German chancellor. She departs China for Japan on Wednesday.
Comments