The strategy and the data diverge
Since 2023 German and EU policy has been built around de-risking: reducing strategic dependence on China without full decoupling. The 2025-2026 trade data show the dependence deepening, not easing. Germany imported €170.6 billion of goods from China in 2025, up 8.8 percent, while exports to China fell 9.7 percent to €81.3 billion. China is now Germany's largest trading partner, overwhelmingly as a supplier. The official strategy and the actual supply chain are moving in opposite directions, and that divergence is the heart of Germany's external vulnerability.
Where the dependence bites
The aggregate trade numbers understate the strategic exposure because the dependence is concentrated in exactly the inputs Germany needs for its green and digital transitions. China dominates global supply of the batteries, rare earths, processed critical minerals, solar components and certain pharmaceutical precursors on which Germany's electrification, defence and health strategies depend. A fiscal programme that pours €100 billion into climate investment is, in part, a programme that increases demand for Chinese-supplied inputs. The harder Germany pushes its transition, the more it can deepen the very dependence it is trying to reduce - unless European and allied supply chains scale fast enough to substitute, which they are not yet doing.
Germany's de-risking strategy contains a contradiction: the transitions it is funding - green, digital, defence - all run through supply chains China dominates. Decarbonising and de-risking at the same time, at speed, may not be simultaneously achievable. Something has to give, and so far it is the de-risking.
The vulnerability and the leverage
The dependence cuts both ways, which is both the danger and the partial safeguard. Germany depends on China for critical inputs; China depends on Germany and Europe as a market and, historically, as a source of advanced capital goods and technology. That mutual exposure has so far deterred either side from weaponising the relationship fully. But the balance of leverage is shifting toward Beijing as Chinese firms climb the value chain and need German technology less, while German industry still needs Chinese inputs. In a serious geopolitical rupture - a Taiwan crisis being the obvious scenario - Germany's exposure is asymmetric and large, and the supply-chain shock would dwarf anything the energy crisis delivered.
| Vector | German exposure | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| Critical minerals / rare earths | High | Deepening |
| Batteries / EV inputs | High | Deepening |
| Solar / green tech | High | Deepening |
| Pharma precursors | Moderate-high | Stable-deepening |
| Export market access | Moderate | Eroding |
| Tech leverage over China | Declining | Weakening |
The investment read
For allocators the supply-chain dependence is a tail risk to price rather than a base-case concern. The base case is continued uneasy interdependence: de-risking proceeding slowly, dependence persisting, and neither side forcing a rupture. The tail is a geopolitical shock - a Taiwan crisis, a sanctions escalation - that exposes the asymmetry suddenly and severely, delivering a supply-chain shock to German industry larger than the energy crisis. That tail is not imminent, but it is fat, and it argues for a structural discount on the most China-dependent parts of the German industrial complex and a premium on the firms and sectors building genuine supply-chain resilience.
The Taiwan scenario is the one that matters. A serious cross-strait crisis would hit Germany through its critical-input dependence harder than almost any other developed economy, with no quick substitute available. It is low-probability, high-severity, and underpriced in German industrial valuations.