BEIJING - Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for closer cooperation between China and Germany at a time when the global environment is “changing”, following a meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Beijing.

“As influential powers, China and Germany should all the more so work together in times of change and chaos to make more contributions to world peace and development,” said Mr Xi, during the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders at the Great Hall of the People in the Chinese capital on Friday.

He added that both countries should jointly reject bloc confrontation and ideological interference, according to a read-out of the meeting released by state news agency Xinhua.

Mr Scholz, who is on a one-day visit to China, had told the Chinese leader that Germany was against “decoupling”, and was willing to continue to deepen economic and trade cooperation with China, said the Xinhua statement.

In a separate meeting with Premier Li Keqiang, the German leader had also pressed the Chinese for “equal market access” between the two countries.

Mr Xi had said that Beijing was willing to expand its cooperation with Berlin to areas such as artificial intelligence and digitalisation.

Coming at a time when Beijing is facing increasing efforts by the United States to cut it off from key technologies, and when the European Union and Washington are considering limiting their economic reliance on China, Mr Scholz’s visit is being closely watched by analysts.

The Group of Seven (G-7) on Friday, in a communique after a two-day meeting in Germany, said: “We remind China of the need... to abstain from threats, coercion, intimidation, or the use of force”. The G-7 said it remained “seriously concerned about the situation in and around the East and South China seas” after China earlier this year staged war games around Taiwan.

Beijing’s close ties with Moscow have also sparked concern over China’s intentions in Europe.

Mr Scholz, however, has called for expanding partnerships with China, which Berlin counts as a crucial market, particularly for its car manufacturers.

Before his visit, the German government had approved a deal for Chinese shipping company Cosco to acquire a minority stake in one of the terminals at Hamburg’s port, despite national security concerns over China’s ownership of critical infrastructure.

In an op-ed published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Politico before his trip, Mr Scholz stressed the importance of engaging China at a time when “new centres of power are emerging in a multipolar world”.

Berlin, he said, aims to “establish and expand partnerships with all of them”, and did not intend to decouple from Beijing.

Mr Scholz, who was accompanied by a delegation of senior German executives, is the first leader from a G-7 country to visit China since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, and is also the first Western leader to meet Mr Xi after the Communist Party’s recent congress.

Professor Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, said this visit showed the German Chancellor was clearly “putting (Germany’s) economic and business interests upfront”.

He added that the keenness with which “the Chinese party-state engages with Germany, ahead of other European powers, must have given Scholz a basis to think that Germany should take advantage of it” at a time when Germany’s economy is under pressure because of the Ukraine war.

But he also added that with the EU getting more worried about China’s intentions, “there is a question over how far can Mr Scholz go beyond the general mood in the EU as a whole”.

Professor Zhu Feng, dean of the Institute of International Relations at Nanjing University, said the trip was a clear sign from Berlin that it was unwilling to let its economic interests be “taken hostage” by America’s anti-China strategy.

“It’s a big encouragement for China, and the most important thing here for China to realise is that in order to resist pressure from the US, it must more comprehensively open up and integrate itself with the international community,” he said.