LUDWIGSHAFEN (dpa-AFX) - Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has offered the business community to work together to make Germany more resilient in the face of challenges from China and Russia. "Germany can only be as strong externally within the framework of the EU as (we) can be internally," the Green Party politician said Wednesday during an appearance with the head of chemical company BASF, Martin Brudermüller, at the group's headquarters in Ludwigshafen. "All we need for resilience is a strong economy, is a strong society."

After presenting the German government's China strategy, Baerbock had earlier met representatives of German financial institutions at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. Her summer trip is themed "Strong together" on Germany's resilience.

At BASF, Baerbock stressed, "No strategy works where the federal government says, 'That's our strategy,' and everyone else says, 'That's already it.'" She added that we need to talk about what we learn from dependencies on China, for example. "We can only become more resilient together if we think about this from the federal level, (the) European level, with business, with universities, with (the) society together."

The transformation to a company operating with green energy is "not a leap, but a path that you take together, where you always have to learn anew," Baerbock stressed in view of concerns in the energy-intensive chemical industry about rising costs. The same also applies, she said, when it comes to the global economy becoming more diversified. "This is also not something we do from one day to the next, but over several, if not many years."

Brudermüller said overcoming the challenges posed by competition with Asia, for example, "we will only be able to do it together." For his company, he said, it is a difficult time. The task, he said, is to reposition Germany and BASF in the new geopolitical field of forces. "This is a tour de force. I think we can really only do it together." The chemical industry plays an important role in Germany and Europe, he said, and is at the beginning of the value-added chains./bk/DP/zb