The German industrial manufacturing firm Gemtec produces machines and parts used in supply chains all around the world. 

One of the company's main customers is the automotive industry. That has led them to sell goods and services to China, which now produces the most cars in the world. 

"There are years where China's been 20 to 25 percent of our business and there have been years where it's been 75 to 80 percent," Gemtec's director of Special Machine Construction Michael Gawalek tells CGTN. 

German engineering is highly sought after, but for many of the firm's core products, it doesn't make economic sense to ship them.

They've now partnered with a Chinese firm which was already doing something similar. Together, they have two plants in China, which they're getting off the ground in spite of coronavirus travel restrictions. 

"We're starting now to manufacture there together with our Chinese partner," says Gawalek. "It's not easy at the moment. It would be a lot easier if we could physically be there, but that's not possible right now. Still, we're finding other ways, and that's the way we're going in the future."

Chinese firms have also invested in Germany in recent years, particularly in high-tech manufacturing. The Midea group's acquisition of the robot maker Kuka in 2017 was a subject of debate at the time. The German government said it would have preferred a European buyer, but it's part of a trend of industrial cooperation both here and in China. 

"Today, a lot of Chinese companies are also quite well developed and these companies can learn speed and maybe adaptability to the market" said Achim Haug, director for East Asia at Germany Trade and Invest. 

"German companies also use the Chinese markets to cooperate with startups, maybe in the fields of autonomous driving, artificial intelligence and so on," added Haug. 

China overtook the U.S. to become Germany's biggest trading partner in 2016, and 2020 is set to be a big year for relations between Berlin and Beijing. Germany takes over the EU's rotating presidency in July, and chancellor Angela Merkel has said that Europe's China policy will be a major focus of that effort.

In some European capitals, there are worries about whether Chinese firms are having too much influence. And many European companies still have concerns that they don't have the same market access in China as Chinese firms do in Europe. 

"Those concerns have been addressed to some extent. Laws have been implemented, some customs duties have been lowered for consumer goods, for example, recently, but there's still field for improvements," said Haug. 

As the world recovers from the coronavirus economic crisis, how supply chains in manufacturing will develop is very much an open question. But many companies in Germany think they need to continue to look east to stay on the cutting edge.

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[This article was updated on 28/5/2020 to clarify the titles of Haug and Gawalek]