On April 29, Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao met with Muller, Chairman of the German Automobile Industry Association. The two sides exchanged views on issues such as overcapacity, EU anti-subsidy investigations on electric vehicles against China, and Sino-German and China-EU cooperation in the automobile industry.

Wang Wentao said that from the perspective of global scale and future demand, there is no excess capacity in emerging industries such as electric vehicles. The government should provide a free and fair competitive environment for enterprises, rather than artificially suppressing or setting limits. The EU launched a countervailing investigation on Chinese electric vehicles, which neither European companies took the initiative to apply nor received support from the industry. China firmly opposes this. The EU should not hold high the banner of green transformation with one hand and wield the stick of protectionism with the other, and pursue double standards in dealing with climate change issues. In fact, developed countries such as the United States and Europe have large amounts of subsidies in fields such as chips, electric vehicles, and agriculture. China believes that subsidies should be based on WTO rules and be transparent. It is willing to discuss subsidy issues with all parties within the framework of the WTO to maintain a free, open, fair and predictable international trading environment.

Wang Wentao said that Sino-German automobile industry cooperation is the benchmark for Sino-German and China-EU cooperation. The Chinese government firmly promotes the "double carbon" goal and welcomes the German automobile industry to actively seize the opportunities of China's green transformation and intelligent development, strengthen investment and R & D cooperation with China, make good use of consumption-promoting policies such as replacing old cars with new ones, and deepen the Chinese market to achieve mutual benefit. Win-win results.

Muller said that the German automobile industry firmly supports market opening and fair competition and opposes trade protectionism. Adding tariffs is not the solution to trade problems. Germany is willing to strengthen cooperation with China in areas such as intelligent networking, autonomous driving, low-carbon emission reduction, and circular economy, and welcomes Chinese automobile companies to invest in Germany.