Kai Strittmatter

What new challenges the new totalitarianism presents to us

Everyone is looking at China. Some are hopeful because they dream of the country once again being the engine of the global economy. The others are nervous, because it is now clear: China is also our rival in a new competition between systems. Under state and party leader Xi Jinping, the authoritarian state is reinventing itself. China is marching self-confidently into the world and now wants to reshape it according to its ideas. At the same time, its system is being updated with the instruments of the 21st century and is becoming a hi-tech surveillance state. Since the Ukraine war and the German policy change towards Russia, the question has become more pressing than ever: How will we deal with the autocrats in Beijing in the future? Do we need a turning point towards China too? Kai Strittmatter, one of the best experts on China in Germany for many years, tries to find answers in his lecture.

Kai Strittmatter, born in 1965 in the Allgäu, is a leading China expert. He studied Chinese studies at the LMU Munich, in Xi'an and Taipei, and then graduated from the German Journalism Academy. He then worked as a foreign correspondent for the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, spending 14 years in China. Numerous book publications about this country. In 2014 he received the renowned Theodor Wolff Prize for a China report. Currently political editor in the Munich SZ editorial team.

Photo: Lasse Bach Martinussen