Chairman Xu Chen,

President Jens Eskelund, 

Distinguished business leaders and guests,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Good afternoon!

In this beautiful season of harvest, I am delighted to join you at today’s EU-China Business Leaders Roundtable Dialogue to celebrate our friendship and promote bilateral trade and economic cooperation. Here, I would like to thank the organizers for their thoughtful preparation. Also, my sincere thanks go to all of you for promoting cooperation ties and friendly exchanges between us.

The theme of this dialogue is timely and meaningful. The world today stands at a critical crossroads with intertwined turmoil and chaos. The continuation of the Ukrainian crisis, the intensification of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, together with the persistence of high inflation have brought great uncertainties to the global economic recovery. According to IMF's latest forecast, the global economy will grow by only 3% in 2023, below the historical average of 3.8%. 

China and the EU are two major forces, markets and civilizations. The more turbulent international landscape becomes and the more global challenges there are, the more important and indispensable the cooperation between our two sides will be.

Our bilateral relations are beginning to warm up with the restart of exchanges at all levels. Over the past year, President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang met President Charles Michel, President von der Leyen, and the leaders of several EU member states, providing strategic guidance for China-EU relations. Recently, we have resumed high-level dialogues of environment and climate, digital, economy and trade, energy and strategy, and reached a number of consensus and tangible results, greatly boosting the confidence of business community. Now, we are keeping close contact with EU partners on a summit before the end of the year.

Our trade and economic cooperation continues to grow and continues to serve as the bedrock of bilateral relations. China and the EU remain each other's second largest trading partners with a 22.8% increase in our bilateral trade last year, and with a trade volume exceeding 2 billion Euros every day. Our two-way investment continues to expand, with the EU's investment in China increasing by 92.2% last year. At the same time, Chinese companies are demonstrating great enthusiasm in exploring the European market. They bring considerable tax revenue and new jobs to Europe and strongly support Europe’s green and digital transition and economic recovery.

As key development partners for each other, we are highly complementary in market, capital and technology. We also share strong resilience and broad prospects for cooperation in digital economy, green development, environmental protection, new energy, artificial intelligence and many other sectors. 

This year, China’s economy continues to show good momentum in recovery and growth. It remains the most important engine driving global economic growth. China will maintain high-level opening up, accelerate its pace for new development pattern, and is willing to share the economic opportunities arising from the Chinese modernization process with Europe and the rest of the world. We encourage European companies to fully utilize such platforms as the China International Import Expo to tap into the Chinese market.

Today I’d like to express my special appreciation to all the entrepreneurs from both sides. Our trade and economic cooperation cannot be so fruitful without your contribution. Entrepreneurship is an indispensable driving force for economic growth and social progress. It is your wisdom and dedication that makes our win-win cooperation flourish.

Ladies and gentlemen,

After decades of close cooperation, our economies have formed a symbiotic relationship. It is a natural outcome of market economy and globalization, and helps both sides improve productivity and economic performance. It is fair to say that China and the EU are partners instead of rivals. Cooperation doesn’t go against de-risking, and interdependence doesn’t simply mean insecurity. In fact, in our view, the biggest risk is not to cooperate, and the biggest insecurity is not to develop.

As two major forces advocating multi-polarity and multilateralism, China and EU enjoy a solid foundation for cooperation. We have no fundamental conflict of interests, and can only benefit from each other's development. The essence of China-EU cooperation is complementarity and win-win, and enjoys widespread popular support. Despite our differences in history, culture, development stage and social system, we share broad common interests and strategic consensus in addressing global challenges including climate change.

This year marks the 48th anniversary of the establishment of our diplomatic relations. It also celebrates the 20th anniversary of our comprehensive strategic partnership. Going forward, we should stay committed to the principle of mutual benefit, enhance our mutual trust and cooperation, deepen our dialogues, and resolve our differences through consultation. 

Together we should advocate economic globalization and trade liberalization. We should keep our doors open to each other, expand our trade and mutual investment, oppose decoupling in whatever name, and resist the disruption of industrial and supply chains under whatever pretext. 

We should prioritize development and encourage the business communities of both sides to deepen their collaboration, and foster an enabling environment for our trade and economic exchanges. 

We should strengthen policy dialogue and coordination, and use dialogue mechanisms such as this one to raise our voices against any restrictive and discriminatory practices that harm the interests of both sides, and to further our cooperation across the board for our mutual benefit and joint development. 

Ladies and gentlemen,

In autumn, the Chinese people have the custom of climbing mountains and appreciate scenery from afar. The China-EU relations also need to be viewed with a far-sighted vision. China always sees our relations from a strategic and long-term perspective. I do hope that business leaders from both sides could likewise think far, and join hands in bringing more benefits to our people. In this respect, this Roundtable Dialogue has much to deliver.

In conclusion, I wish this Roundtable Dialogue a great success.

Thank you.