Germany’s Chinese Growth Engine Stalls

Germany’s Chinese Growth Engine Stalls
Container ships are loaded at a loading terminal in the port of Hamburg in Germany on Oct. 28, 2019. Fabian Bimmer/Reuters
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BERLIN—For three decades, China’s burgeoning demand for German cars, machines and engineering tools has been a steady engine of growth for Europe’s largest economy, gratefully championed by successive governments in Berlin.

But the engine is starting to splutter. China’s economy is slowing and its factories are becoming rivals to the German giants that once supplied them.