Theo Sommer offers decades of China perspective

A veteran German publisher shares his enthusiasm for China and his encounters with Deng Xiaoping, Liu Wei reports.

'I am the oldest piece of furniture in this building," says Theo Sommer, publisher and editor-at-large of Die Zeit, one of Germany's most respected newspapers. Die Zeit means "The Time".

The 84-year old smiles and points to the ceiling of his office in central Hamburg: "Mr Schmidt upstairs is even older. He is 96."

Sommer is in fact referring to former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who is the co-publisher of Die Zeit.

The two became close in 1983, when Sommer was editor-in-chief, and they still share a passion for international strategy, especially involving China.

He accompanied Schmidt when the former chancellor visited China in 1975, when he met Deng Xiaoping, the first of three meetings between the two statesmen.

"He was a short man, full of energy, who used the spittoon very generously, but he never missed it," he recalls of that meeting with the former Chinese leader, three years before Deng initiated the country's historic reform and opening-up.

Schmidt and Deng were both heavy smokers and the chancellor had one of the German delegates use a lighter to light Deng's cigarette.

"He joked how it was such a modern instrument. He said China didn't have them and was very backward, but he added China would learn from foreign countries," Sommer says of Deng.