German Chancellor Friedrich Merz arrived in the mainland tech hub of Hangzhou on Thursday with a large group of entrepreneurs, hoping to land new contracts a day after meeting President Xi Jinping and announcing an Airbus deal.

Merz's first official visit to China comes as Berlin and Beijing seek to build on decades-old economic ties to weather global uncertainty sparked by US President Donald Trump's tariff blitz and erratic foreign policies.

China, the world's number two economy, overtook the United States last year to become Germany's biggest trade partner.

The German leader is accompanied in China by a large delegation of business leaders, including executives of auto giants Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes.

Merz visited a Mercedes plant in Beijing on Thursday morning, where he was shown a demonstration of self-driving vehicles.

He then travelled to Hangzhou, where he visited the plants of Germany's Siemens Energy and Chinese humanoid robot-maker Unitree.

The eastern city is home to several other major Chinese tech companies like AI unicorn DeepSeek and e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Following talks with Xi and top leaders in the capital on Wednesday, Merz said that China had agreed to purchase up to 120 Airbus aircraft, adding that it "demonstrates how worthwhile such trips can be".

Other contracts were in the pipeline, Merz added.

The two leaders stressed their commitment to developing closer strategic relations, with Xi telling Merz he was willing to take relations to "new levels".

Merz is the latest in a string of Western leaders to court Beijing recently.

He follows Britain's Keir Starmer, France's Emmanuel Macron and Canada's Mark Carney, as they recoil from the mercurial policies of Trump, who is also expected to visit from March 31. (AFP)



Edited by Thomas McAlinden