Fact check: German foreign minister wasn't thrown out of press conference by Chinese counterpart

Despite palpable tensions, Annalena Baerbock was not thrown out by the Chinese foreign minister during her visit to Beijing last week.

Transcript

00:00No, China did not cancel a press conference with German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

00:10Videos claiming to show German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock being thrown out of a press

00:15conference by her Chinese counterpart have been manipulated and taken out of context.

00:21Baerbock visited Beijing last week for talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

00:27This widely shared video claims to show her being thrown out of a press conference along

00:32with German journalists and that the press conference was then cancelled.

00:35But the video was in fact taken during Baerbock's first visit to China back in April 2023.

00:43Here are the original images from Euronews' reporting from that visit over a year and

00:48half ago.

00:49She can be seen with the then Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, not the current foreign

00:54minister whom she met last week.

00:56Baerbock was not thrown out of the press conference and Gang was simply summoning her out of the

01:02room.

01:03Qin Gang, in fact, no longer serves in the Chinese government after he mysteriously disappeared

01:08from public view in the summer of 2023.

01:13The claims that relations between Baerbock and Chinese ministers broke down last week

01:18are therefore untrue.

01:20It is, however, true that Baerbock's visit last week was at times tense.

01:25She was extremely critical of Beijing's support for Russia's war in Ukraine, warning it would

01:30impact relations with Germany.

01:32She also called out the Chinese government for its highly subsidised electric car market,

01:38which is suffocating European and German businesses.