A Germany that increasingly strives to become independent of its economic partner China; a China that is more and more assertively pursuing its own path and is no longer really interested in cooperating with the West? Alexander Birle finds it difficult to agree with such assessments if they are made too generally. „The idea that the two countries are increasingly distancing themselves from each other has, after all, recently established itself as a kind of standard narrative. But the truth is much more complex,“ he says.