Zhu Rongji, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, State Councilor Wu Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee Wei Jianxing as well as member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee Hu Jintao. Relations would continue to improve after 1998. For instance, both Beijing and Berlin fervently opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and in 2006 both Germany (the largest economy and the most populous country of the European Union) and China further enhanced their bilateral political, economic and diplomatic ties within the framework of Sino-EU strategic partnerships. Both Germany and China opposed direct military involvement in the 2011 Libyan civil war. Before the 2011 visit of China's PM Wen Jiabao, the Chinese government issued a "White Book on the accomplishments and perspective of Sino-German cooperation", the first of its kind for a European country. The visit also marked the first Sino-German government consultations, an exclusive mechanism for Sino-German communications. In July 2019, the UN ambassadors from 22 nations, including Germany, signed a joint letter to the UNHRC condemning China's mistreatment of the Uyghurs as well as its mistreatment of other minority groups, urging the CCP leader Xi Jinping's government to close the Xinjiang internment camps. In September 2019, China's ambassador to Germany stated that the meeting between Germany's foreign minister and Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong will damage relations with China. On 22 April 2020, Germany's Interior Ministry released a letter revealing that Chinese diplomats had contacted German Government officials to encourage them to make positive statements on how China was handling the coronavirus pandemic. The German government did not comply with these requests. In December 2020, with Germany ending its 2-year term on the United Nations Security Council, Chinese Ambassador Geng Shuang responded "Out of the bottom of my heart: good riddance" in response to the German Ambassador Christoph Heusgen's appeal to free two Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor detained in China. In October 2021 a tweet from the Global Times called for a “final solution to the Taiwan question” which was condemned by German politician Frank Müller-Rosentritt for its similarity to the “final solution to the Jewish question” which resulted in the Holocaust. In December 2021 as a result of a diplomatic spat between Lithuania and China over Taiwan and human rights China pressured Continental AG and other German companies to stop doing business with Lithuania. The Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie described the expansion