German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Europe and Asia can benefit from closer ties across trade and security issues as both regions face pressures from great powers, particularly China.
“Together, we will be more successful if we respond in a coordinated manner to violations of free and fair trade,” he said Tuesday in Singapore, before he travels to Japan and South Korea.
“Your security has a direct bearing on ours. Our security has a direct bearing on yours,” he said in a speech that outlined shared interests between the two regions.
The German leader focused special attention in his remarks on China, whose surging exports and increasingly high-end manufacturing risks hollowing out industries in many European economies. But for many countries in Asia, particularly the continent’s southeast, the economic and trade relationships are often more intertwined.
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