{"id":495002,"date":"2026-02-21T16:36:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T16:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/495002\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T16:36:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T16:36:15","slug":"merz-will-struggle-to-defy-economic-gravity-on-first-china-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/495002\/","title":{"rendered":"Merz Will Struggle to Defy Economic Gravity on First China Trip"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ArticleBodyText_articleBodyContent__17wqE typography_articleBody___5jDr\" data-component=\"paragraph\">During his campaign, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz signaled a radical change from previous leaders\u2019 cheerleading for trade with China: He warned business chiefs against bigger investments there and not to count on government help if things went wrong. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ArticleBodyText_articleBodyContent__17wqE typography_articleBody___5jDr\" data-component=\"paragraph\">But economic gravity is proving inescapable, countering talk from Berlin of \u201cderisking\u201d from the world\u2019s second-largest economy. German investment in China reached a four-year high in 2025, and Chinese exports to Germany increased while German exports to China dropped.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During his campaign, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz signaled a radical change from previous leaders\u2019 cheerleading for trade with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,3686,79354,99,512,164,2057,11054,28245,5717,3786,102342,84,39896],"class_list":["post-495002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-beijing","tag-berlin","tag-business","tag-china","tag-economy","tag-europe","tag-exports","tag-foreign-policy","tag-germany","tag-government","tag-jinping-xi","tag-politics","tag-raw-materials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}