This thesis assesses how Germany piloted its relationship with China during the two Schröder administrations from 1998 to 2005 and the first three Merkel administrations from 2005 to 2017. Its core focus is the foreign policy decision-making process in Germany. It examines how factors within the country had constructed Germany’s engagement with China.

As a research project evaluating Germany’s agency in the decision-making process, it adopts Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) as its core analytical framework. Factors at three levels of analysis are identified and examined: the individual, the bureaucratic, and the societal level. The analysis of the chosen factors is further carried out through three identified key themes – economic interest, ignorance, and trust – which played a profound role in assessing the existence of an underlying strategy in Germany’s China approach.

The core contribution of this thesis is two-fold. First, this research fills a gap in the existing literature. Examining the relations across five terms provides an updated and holistic analysis of the recent evolution of the Germany-China relationship. Moreover, in contrast to the more common structure-based approaches in the field, it deconstructs Germany’s agency to unveil existing factors influencing the country’s decision-making process. Second, its assessment and findings offer empirically valuable insights that can act as a foundation for rethinking and navigating the existing, and future, Germany-China relationship from a strategic perspective.