The boss of BASF said it was vital for the German chemical giant to invest in China to ensure future growth, and urged Berlin to seek stronger ties with Beijing.
The group is building a massive integrated chemical complex in southern China, its biggest ever investment project set to cost around 8.7 billion euros ($10.1 billion).
But the project has proven controversial at a time concerns have been growing about German firms' heavy economic dependence on China.
CEO Markus Kamieth, however, said that "if you want to be a growth company in chemicals, you have to grow in China."
"China is by far the strongest manufacturing country in the world. So if China grows, the market grows,” he told several media outlets in Berlin.
A host of problems, ranging from high energy costs to onerous regulations, have pushed the German chemical sector into crisis in recent years.
BASF, the world's biggest chemical company by revenues, has announced plans to make big savings in recent years, including by cutting jobs at its historic Ludwigshafen headquarters in Germany.
The group announced last week that its site in China, in Zhanjiang, Guangdong province, had started producing chemicals, marking a significant milestone for the project.
China's economy has been battling a slowdown however, and Kamieth said business there had been a little slower than expected.
"The margins that we get from the product in the Chinese market will be lower than what we originally expected... We will have an economically more difficult start," he said.
