German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set to travel to Beijing on Friday, becoming the first Group of Seven leader to visit since the start of the pandemic, but allies in Germany, Europe and the United States have raised concerns about his ability to deliver a clear, coherent message on where his country and the broader West stand.
Scholz will be traveling alongside a delegation of business leaders, and the economic emphasis strikes some observers as worrying - a little too similar to former chancellor Angela Merkel's mercantilist approach to foreign policy, which cemented Germany's reliance on cheap Russian energy and left Berlin painfully exposed when relations with Moscow deteriorated over the war in Ukraine.
