As Europe rethinks relations with Beijing, Germany’s ‘China City’ doesn’t want you to call it that anymore

The shift in Duisburg – population 500,000 – mirrors a broader reset across the continent, write Loveday Morris, Kate Brady and Emily Rauhala

A container from China arrives at the port of Duisburg on 4 May (Fabian Ritter/The Washington Post)

Trains laden with containers of clothes and solar panels straight from China still trundle into the station here about five times a day, but other plans to forge links between this German rust-belt city and Beijing have ground to a halt.

Duisburg’s aspirations of using Chinese tech giant Huawei to modernise its administration, schools and traffic systems are on ice. Construction of a Chinese business hub on the Rhine has been abandoned, and embarrassment hangs in the air.

Local officials who not long ago touted Duisburg as Germany’s “China City” say that’s not a tagline they want to use anymore. “Public opinion has changed, political opinion has changed,” said Markus Teuber, the China commissioner for Duisburg, the sole German city to have such a post.