Context
China’s rapid economic development has led to huge prosperity gains but has also been accompanied by increasing environmental pollution. Despite significant progress, China’s legislation on environmental protection and climate action still has major gaps. For example, it has no dedicated climate protection act. Legal regulation is also required for other ‘global public goods’, such as global health and a fair and sustainable economic and trade system.
Global public goods benefit not just individual states but all countries, people and generations. To better protect global public goods, Germany therefore has an interest in supporting China's legal reforms, because better laws and more rule of law in China also benefit German businesses.
While China’s understanding of the rule of law differs from European models, China still looks to Germany regarding legal reforms, not only in its approaches to legislation, but also to the German methodology of a coherent, transparent and fair application of the law.
