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“With your chancellorship, you ensured that a woman at the head of government, that female power too, will forever be a matter of course in our country.”

Mr Scholz's response to a shifting China may yet come to be the defining test of his chancellorship.

Exports to China helped lift Germany out of mass unemployment in the early years of her chancellorship, and cushioned the blow of the financial crisis years later.

Mr. Scholz’s most recent travails come on top of a rocky start to his chancellorship.

Schröder might well have been, given the appearance of possible impropriety; the pipeline he was now being asked to head had been agreed to in the final weeks of his chancellorship, with his strong support.