Sure, I "get" that, but if you say, for example, "Bill Gates owns billions of dollars worth of assets in China," does he really?
Who really owns whom?
In China, the Chinese own you, and if you do a lot of business with them (think basketball) then they own you in your own country too.
Rockingham: "On the whole, the German public and government see China as more congenial and profitable than the United States and not a threat or rival."
Right, just like Walmart, Germans find they can buy good stuff cheap in China, so they source component parts & raw materials where they can save the most money.
And so long as they can maintain their $300 billion global net trade surplus, they don't mind being in the hole maybe $20 billion with China.
But the three countries which contribute most to Germany's trade surplus are the UK, US and France, and I would suppose it to be good foreign policy among Germans not to p*ss off the people who make their easy-life possible.
At some point the facts of life will need to be explained to those German young people.