The deputy speaker of the German Bundestag and Green Party foreign‑policy spokesperson Omid Nouripour has accused China of actively supporting the war in Ukraine and of creating an artificial shortage of rare‑earth metals.
He told the news outlet “Welt” on Tuesday that China does not merely fail to condemn the conflict; it supplies a large share of the goods and materials that Russia uses in the war. According to Nouripour, China continues to ship “dual‑use” items-goods that can be employed for both civilian and military purposes-while simultaneously claiming that they are purely civilian. In doing so, the country is said to restrict the global market for these materials in order to strengthen its own position.
Nouripour urged Chancellor Friedrich Merz of the CDU to address this issue on his upcoming trip to the People’s Republic of China, putting it alongside human‑rights concerns. “I think it’s positive that the chancellor will be there” he added.
He compared the current economic dependence on China to Germany’s pre‑war reliance on Russian energy. Calling both nations “dictatorships” that exploit such dependencies for strategic gain, Nouripour stressed the importance of breaking away from them. “On the anniversary of Russia’s invasion, we must remember that these dependencies can have fatal consequences” he said. “We need to do everything we can to shed them, because these dictatorships use their hold on us against us”.