German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended her lobbying for Wirecard during a 2019 visit to China, testifying before a parliamentary committee Friday that the payments company received no special treatment and that it was in Germany s interest to promote its businesses. Merkel said Wirecard s aim of entering the Chinese market overlapped with the best interests of the German economy as a whole. The company later collapsed in an accounting scandal. Despite all the press reports, there was no reason to assume serious irregularities at Wirecard at the time of the China trip, German news agency dpa quoted the chancellor as telling the committee.