Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant,
Deputy First Minister McGuinness,
Enterprise Minister Bell,
Lord Mayor Carson,
Chairman Wong,
Distinguished guests and friends,
Good evening!
It is great pleasure to have you all here! Warmly welcome to this Dinner Party celebrating Chinese New Year, the Year of Monkey!As we know it is busy time for lots of you, so I really appreciate that you squeezed time for this event. In Chinese culture, Monkey symbolizes intelligence and braveness, and particularly this year’s monkey is paring with the symbol of Sun, well representing hot-red prosperity and vigorous Progress.
On this special occasion, I would like, on behalf of the Chinese Consulate-General in Belfast, to extend our best wishes to all of you here, and to all the fellow Chinese and local friends in Northern Ireland. I wish everyone lucky, healthy, successful and happy in the Year of Monkey!
Time flies so quickly. I clearly remember last year we were just here celebrating the Year of Sheep, now the Year of Monkey arrived. Tonight I see lots of old friends coming back and much more new friends joining us. Your friendship and kindness always touches me most, so here I also propose to celebrate our long-lasting friendship.
Thanks to the great support and assistance of NI Governments as well as Chinese Community and other sectors, Chinese Consulate-General in Belfast has been making all-around and obvious progress. We have bought ideal premises and look forward to moving in after necessary redecoration, so that we could function properly and provide better services.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The past year of 2015 is regarded as a milestone in the history of China-UK relations. There happened quite a few important events with great significance on the bilateral ties. The most important one was surely the successful “Super State Visit” of Chinese President Xi Jinping to the UK.
The top leaders of our two countries upgraded China-UK relations to a global comprehensive strategic partnership for the 21st century and opened up a “Golden Era” of enduring, open and win-win cooperation. We signed business deals valued at 40 billion pounds, including the breakthrough in cooperation of Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station, finance, automobile, airspace, creative industries, and encouraging collaboration on High-Speed 2 railway, and so on.
The year of 2015 also witnessed notable development of friendly relations between China and NI.
The good governmental relations were enhanced. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was warmly received by the then First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. Chinese Consulate-General in Belfast was officially inaugurated jointly by Foreign Minister Wang, Ambassador Liu Xiaoming, the then Finance Minister Foster, representing First Minister, and Deputy First Minister McGuinness.
NI Agriculture Minister Michelle O’Neill and Minister Jonathan Bell paid visits to China respectively and both achieved positive results regarding cooperation in agriculture, trade and investment. NI Executive also signed MoU respectively with Chinese Ministry of Culture and HuBei Province.
Other achievements are also remarkable. Bombardier is doing so well in China and expanding its business. Karro Food Group and Dunbia are expected to export pork to China soon. Queens University and Ulster University are harvesting cooperation with China. Confucius Institute at Ulster University became a New Star of the year. Minister Bell as Vice Chairman and Confucius Classroom at Millburn Primary School won the highly-respected awards from Confucius Headquarters. Chinese tourists to Northern Ireland were over 30,000, rising about 50% over the previous year.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The year of 2015 was also extraordinary for China. China's GDP growth rate is 6.9%, the lowest in recent 25 years, but still proper and reasonable given the huge GDP basis of 10 trillion US dollars .
China’s trade totaled 1.68 trillion US dollars. Overseas investment amounted to 127.6 billion US dollars. Outbound tourists reached 120 million. Its contribution to the global economic growth was over 25%.
The structure of economy was greatly improved. The service industry accounted for 50.5% of GDP, the final consumption contributed over 66% to the economic growth. The industries became more environment-friendly, with energy- consumption per GDP declined by 5.6%. The regional development tended to be more balanced, with urbanization rate up to about 56%.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
2016 is the first year of China’s 13th Five-Year Plan, a decisive period for China to reach the first 100-year’s goal, that is to double China’s GDP of 2020 on the basis of 2010. The new Plan will primarily focus on five new developing concepts: That is Innovation, Balanced growth, Green economy, Opening-up and Inclusive Development. Innovation is placed at the top of the new development.
China is determined to tap and create new driving forces by deepening systematic reform and by opening wider to the world. As you know, China is now advancing“One Belt and One Road” initiative, in order to improve trade and cooperation with ASEAN, Central Asian and European countries. UK has already been involved in the project by joining AIIB as a founding member.
2016 is the first year of “Golden Era” of China-UK relations. Now both sides are working hard to promote trade to the target of 100 billion US dollars and to dig out business opportunities by strengthening synergy between the development strategies of both countries.
From the beginning of this year, our two countries started issuing two-year multiple-entry visas to citizens of both sides, which will definitely facilitate personnel exchanges and bilateral collaboration.
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is well known, both Chinese government and NI government are always strongly committed to build stronger relationship.
According to my knowledge, Northern Ireland has its unique advantages, such as low-cost of business, high level of education, strong financial support and high-tech manufacturing, green food and drink production, growing knowledge economy and creative industries and tourism and so on.
I just learned from yesterday’s newspaper that, Zoomlion, a heavy equipment Chinese company, is bidding for merging the Powersceen in Co Tyrone. If the merger would be successful, it could be a breakthrough of Chinese investment in NI.
I believe, in the context of China-UK Golden Age and China’s New Economic Plan, combined with NI regional characteristics, China-NI cooperation will face more potentials and bear broad prospects in the future.
Chinese community in NI has been growing fast, with around 15,000 Chinese people and over 700 Chinese students and scholars. They have been widely respected for their positive contributions and I believe they will continually be devoted to local social harmony and prosperity as well as China-NI friendly relations.
As always promised, the Chinese Consulate-General looks forward to working with Northern Ireland governments, enterprises, Chinese community and other sectors, to promote China-NI friendship and cooperation to a higher level.
Cheers!
Thank you!