German companies are accelerating efforts to partner with Chinese rivals, conceding in fresh survey results that the local competitors appear poised to seize the lead in global innovation.<\/p>\n
While business sentiment among surveyed German firms in China has seen a slight uptick, optimism has been tempered by fierce price competition and a nationalist \u201cBuy China\u201d push, according to findings from the German Chamber of Commerce\u2019s 2025\/26 Business Confidence Survey.<\/p>\n
About 56 per cent of surveyed firms were planning to deepen engagement with Chinese partners, showing a \u201csharp\u201d increase from the last time the question was included in the survey in 2021, said Martin Hofmann, chairman of the chamber\u2019s North China chapter, at a press conference in Beijing on Tuesday, referring to when only 40 per cent of polled companies were planning to do so.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shows very clearly that the German companies are reaching out to their [Chinese] partners to benefit from innovation, from strategy shifts, and also from the speed of implementation,\u201d he said, noting that strategic cooperation is the main way that companies are planning further engagement.<\/p>\n
The annual survey polled 627 members of the German chamber in China, across sectors including machinery, automotive and business services, between September and October.<\/p>\n
With an eye on the next five years, a record 60 per cent of companies viewed Chinese rivals as current or future innovation leaders, continuing a shift in which domestic firms are seen as setting the technological pace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German companies are accelerating efforts to partner with Chinese rivals, conceding in fresh survey results that the local…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3090],"tags":[3801,2574,51,190148,1395,28901,26314,1700,12726,39659,10026,1824,132392,84092,15396,16,15,23576,143851],"class_list":{"0":"post-607472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-beijing","9":"tag-berlin","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-buy-china","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-chinese-companies","14":"tag-chinese-market","15":"tag-economy","16":"tag-ev","17":"tag-german-chamber-of-commerce","18":"tag-german-companies","19":"tag-germany","20":"tag-huawei-technologies","21":"tag-johannesburg","22":"tag-li-qiang","23":"tag-uk","24":"tag-united-kingdom","25":"tag-volkswagen-group","26":"tag-xpeng"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115650252506233074","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}