BERLIN — China’s refusal to let a group of German MPs visit the country has put Berlin and Beijing at loggerheads.

A trip by the German parliament’s digital affairs committee, scheduled for the end of this month, will likely be canceled because Beijing has said it won't admit the group if it includes Margarete Bause, an opposition lawmaker for the Green Party who has repeatedly called out human rights abuses in China.

The clash over Bause, and her history of facing strong pushback from Beijing, shows how China goes to great lengths to stifle critical voices far beyond its own borders and has become increasingly assertive in doing so.

The standoff also illustrates the dilemma faced by Germany and other Western countries, keen to cultivate ties with an ever more economically important China while also trying to preserve commitments to values such as human rights. China has become a key market and major production center for many big German carmakers and other large companies.

The Bundestag committee, for its part, is not backing down. Although Bause is not normally on the committee, she has been nominated by her party to take the place of a Green member of the panel who can't go on the trip.

“It’s inconceivable that China — or any other country — gets to decide who participates in committee visits by the German Bundestag” — Manuel Höferlin, digital policy spokesperson for the Free Democrats

According to three Bundestag sources, German lawmakers across party lines have agreed internally that they will either travel to China with the 60-year-old in their ranks, or they won’t travel at all.

“It’s inconceivable that China — or any other country — gets to decide who participates in committee visits by the German Bundestag,” said Manuel Höferlin, the digital policy spokesperson for the liberal Free Democrats and a member of the digital affairs committee.

“We’re ready to travel, the trip is planned, the participant list is set. We’re only waiting for the invitation from the Chinese side,” he added. “And if the Chinese say that they can’t issue such an invitation, I guess we won’t be able to go.”

China has shown no sign of softening its position.

“As a sovereign country and host, China has the right to reject uninvited people,” Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, told reporters in Beijing last week. “China surely doesn't welcome anyone that has been lobbying on behalf of anti-China forces and harming China's interests.”

Bause said the Chinese message was clear: “China wants to show that anyone who wants to travel to the country should kindly shut up," she told POLITICO. “I’ve experienced such attempts to intimidate me for over a decade — but the pressure is increasing.”

The German foreign ministry has been quiet on the case. A ministry spokesperson declined to comment on the Chinese remarks. But a ministry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said German diplomats “continue to be in contact with the Chinese side about the issue, including with the Chinese foreign ministry, through our embassy in Beijing.”

The Bundestag’s own department for international affairs, writing on behalf of parliament President Wolfgang Schäuble, asked China’s ambassador to Germany in a letter to accept that deciding who attends committee trips is an “autonomous matter for the Bundestag,” according to an official familiar with the document.

But with August 23, the planned departure date for the trip, less than two weeks away, discussions have reached a stalemate.

China’s embassy in Germany did not reply to a request for an interview, but statements published on its website and comments from Beijing make clear how strongly the country objects to a visit by Bause.

'Wherever Bause is, there’s trouble'

The first time Bause felt the reach of the Chinese state was over a decade ago, according to her own account.

In 2008, Bause was a member of the Bavarian state parliament, leading a small Green group on the opposition benches of the southern German state. She received an invitation to a conference in Munich held by the World Uyghur Congress, which represents members of the ethnic group native to the autonomous Xinjiang region in northwestern China. The organization's headquarters are in Munich, which is home to the majority of Uighurs living in Germany.

At the same time, the Chinese consulate general in Munich began trying to call Bause's office. She met with the consul who urged her not to attend the conference in order “not to strain the good Bavarian-Chinese relations,” Bause recalled.

Until then, Bause said, she had known little about the history of Chinese authorities targeting the Uighur minority. But she went to the conference and, in the years that followed, repeatedly tried to draw attention to the issue while also speaking out against human rights violations in China more generally.

In 2014, she made headlines when — on a visit to China with a delegation from the Bavarian state parliament — she secretly met with dissident artist Ai Weiwei and later released photos of the meeting.

“Wherever Bause is, there’s trouble,” Horst Seehofer, then Bavaria's state premier and now Germany's interior minister, groused afterward.

In 2017, Bause was elected to the German parliament in Berlin and became her party's spokesperson for human rights policy. She pushed for parliament to hold a debate about human rights in China last November.

Hours before the plenary session was due to take place, the Chinese Embassy called her office and asked her to cancel the debate, arguing that it was as an interference in the country's domestic affairs, according to Bause.

But the debate went ahead and Bause gave a speech in the assembly, urging Chancellor Angela Merkel's government to "use all national and international instruments available" to get China to close detention camps, where an estimated 1 million Chinese citizens of Uighur ethnicity are said to be held. China has previously defended the camps as counterterrorism measures; most recently, officials have said that most inmates have been released.

After the speech, China's embassy sent Bause a letter labeled as a diplomatic “démarche” — a term usually used for notes in which governments protest the actions of other governments.

In the document, the embassy accused the German parliament of violating international rules, demanded lawmakers stop “the unjustified allegations towards China as well as interference in China’s domestic matters,” and urged them to take the letter seriously, “to make sure that German-Chinese relations continue to develop in the right direction,” according to a copy seen by POLITICO.

“Beijing is trying permanently to put pressure on politicians, businesses and others — to suppress and prevent everything from the outset that could show China in a bad light in the international arena,” Bause said.

“The Chinese government seems to assume that they can deny German lawmakers entry to the country without having to fear any serious consequences” — Janka Oertel, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States

Again, Bause did not bow to the pressure. In June, her party organized a panel discussion at the Bundestag to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the bloody 1989 crackdown on protesters gathered in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The event featured dissidents such as Hong Kong political activists Ray Wong Toi-yeung and Alan Li Tung-sing.

Backlash from Beijing

With such a track record, the Greens can have been in no doubt that nominating Bause for the China trip would trigger a backlash from Beijing. But Bause said she is well qualified to take part in the visit, despite not being a regular member of the digital committee.

“Many of the planned items on the agenda — such as questions about surveillance, facial recognition or artificial intelligence — are topics that are relevant for human rights as well,” she said.

In early June, her party’s whip formally notified Bundestag President Schäuble in a letter that Bause would replace Dieter Janecek as the Greens’ full member of the digital affairs committee for the duration of the trip.

Around six weeks later, Bause said, she received a phone call from the committee's secretariat, telling her the Chinese Embassy had complained about her name being on the list as she is not a regular committee member.

Bause’s office provided the secretariat with the correspondence with Schäuble, documenting that she had officially been made a member of the committee. But the Chinese Embassy reiterated its position to the committee's secretariat that, as long as Bause was on the participants list, the entire delegation was not invited to visit the country, she said.

Two other Bundestag officials confirmed Bause’s account.

While a statement on the Chinese Embassy’s website notes that Bause is not a regular member of the digital affairs committee, the remarks by ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying in Beijing indicate that this is not China's main problem. Beijing's objections relate to Bause herself and her outspoken comments on Chinese politics.

Beijing's directness surprised China experts in Germany. The boldness could have to do with the fact that the German government, so far, has remained hesitant to openly condemn China's behavior, said Janka Oertel, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank, in Berlin.

“The Chinese government seems to assume that they can deny German lawmakers entry to the country without having to fear any serious consequences,” Oertel said. “And what’s so shocking is that, so far, they seem to be right about that.”

"Even with close economic partners, China's behavior has become much more aggressive in recent years when it comes to imposing its own interests. That also means that criticism from abroad is rejected much more strongly and aggressively," Oertel said.

"China is now operating from a position of strength — and when you're in that position, you don't have to put up with what goes against your own interests."

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