China is trying to get hold of German technologies

Berlin, Frankfort Despite ever stricter regulation, China is getting more and more coveted German technology. The People’s Republic circumvents the stricter controls by Beijing increasingly relying on license models instead of company takeovers in order to continue to obtain German know-how in the future, as experts explained to the Handelsblatt.

German license income from China more than tripled in 2022 compared to 2014, and increased by around half from 2020 to 2022 alone. This is shown by an analysis by the German Economic Institute (IW), which is available exclusively to the Handelsblatt. It is up in the air “whether China has opened up a new path for a problematic technology transfer,” says IW researcher Jürgen Matthes. When asked to what extent this transfer of know-how is controlled, a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of Economics said: Look at the possibilities here.