BERLIN, Germany

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel this week makes her second trip of the year to China, with the eurozone debt crisis taking centrestage as it begins to drag on the two global economic powers.

Merkel was due to take nine ministers with her for the visit tomorrow and Friday to Beijing and Tianjin, which includes talks with Premier Wen Jiabao and a joint cabinet meeting.

And with the near-three-year-old eurozone debt crisis showing signs of spreading even as far as China, Beijing increasingly sees Germany and Merkel as key players in tackling the problem, say analysts.

“The euro crisis seems to have led to an increased Chinese focus on Germany in particular,” Hans Kundnani from the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank, told AFP.

Chinese officials “see Germany playing an increasingly decisive role in EU decision-making and therefore feel they have little choice but to approach Europe through Germany”, he added.

“We have noticed that there is a tendency for her to speak for Europe. China is increasingly looking to her for answers,” said the expert.

Europeans have expressed hope that China could deploy some of its huge foreign currency reserves to invest in EU bailout funds, although there is little sign of this happening as yet.

Nevertheless, at an EU-China meeting in Beijing in July, Dai Bingguo, the Chinese co-chair of the talks, pledged that “China is sincere and firm in supporting European efforts to deal with the sovereign debt problem”.

Merkel and Wen will also be looking to strengthen their own economic ties, amid signs both are being affected by the eurozone crisis.

In its latest report on China, the International Monetary Fund warned the crisis was the biggest external risk facing the fast-growing economy.

And after initially proving resilient to the crisis, forward-looking indicators suggest Germany, Europe’s top economy, is beginning to feel the pain as well.

Germany is China’s top trade partner in the EU with nearly half of all European exports to China coming from Germany. Meanwhile, nearly a quarter of all EU imports from China land in Germany.