German chancellor arrives in Chongqing to start China visit

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrived in Chongqing Sunday morning to kick off his three-day official visit to China.

Scholz is the first leader of Western powers to visit China this year. This is his second visit to China following the one-day whirlwind trip in November 2022 amid the COVID-19 pandemic less than a year after he took office.

Accompanied by a business delegation, he will first visit Chongqing on Sunday before heading to Shanghai on Monday.

President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang will meet with Scholz respectively to discuss China-Germany ties and issues of common concern, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

According to German media, Roland Busch, chief executive officer of Siemens and also chair and president of the Asia-Pacific Committee of German Business, BMW Chairman of the Board of Management Oliver Zipse, Bayer CEO Bill Anderson and ThyssenKrupp CEO Miguel Lopez are part of the business delegation.

Chongqing, a mega city of 34 million on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, is a traditional industrial powerhouse.

As the gateway to Southwest China, it has established as one of the world's largest IT industrial clusters and one of China's biggest auto manufacturing bases.

It aims to build itself into a renowned smart city and a smart manufacturing powerhouse with over 5,000 high-tech companies that contribute 19 percent of the city's industrial output, local authorities said.