Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, 

Good morning everyone! 

It gives me great pleasure to join you here for this event jointly sponsored by the Bavarian Industry Association (VBW) and Hainan Province. On behalf of the Chinese Consulate General in Munich, I would like to express my gratitude to the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy and the VBW for your long-term commitment to promoting Bavaria’s economic and trade cooperation with China. I also wish to take this opportunity to extend my cordial greetings to dear friends in Hainan Province, who are on the other side of the Eurasian continent! 

Today, with the once-in-a-century transformation of our world accelerating, the international situation is becoming increasingly chaotic, and economic globalization is facing severe challenges. Since the new US administration took office, it has implemented a series of rule-breaking and unreasonable unilateral tariff measures, seriously impacting the economic and trade relations between China and the United States, seriously disrupting the international economic and trade order and posing severe challenges to the recovery and growth of the world economy. In this context, the healthy and stable development of China-Europe and China-Germany relations is not only related to the well-being of each other, but also of great significance for the maintenance of  world peace and prosperity.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Europe, and this is an important milestone that connects the past and opens up the future. We hope that Germany, as a core major country of the European Union, will play a pro-active role and inject new impetus into the development of China-Europe relations through high-quality cooperation with China. 

In his congratulatory message to Mr. Friedrich Merz on his election as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany early this month, President Xi Jinping notes that China and Germany are all-round strategic partners. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations 53 years ago, our two countries have adhered to the way of mutual respect, mutual trust and mutual equal treatment, and have always taken the path of mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation. We have grown into good partners who work hand in hand and achieve mutual success, and have promoted the sustained and healthy development of bilateral relations through high-level cooperation. 

In February of this year, Mr. Merz met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference and expressed that the CDU/CSU attaches great importance to its relationship with China, closely follows China's modernization process, and is willing to work with China to maintain the good development momentum of bilateral relations and promote more achievements in Germany-China cooperation. We believe and expect that with the guidance of the leaders of our two countries, China and Germany will once again get closer to each other, deepen mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation, lead China-Europe cooperation in the right direction and jointly promote world peace, stability, development and prosperity. 

No matter how the international situation changes, China will continue to deepen its high-level opening-up and inject new momentum into the world economy. As President Xi Jinping emphasizes, "Only an open China can become a modernized China." "China will steadfastly advance high-level opening-up, comprehensively propel Chinese modernization through high-quality development, and create fresh opportunities for open cooperation among nations." 

In 2024, over 300 reform measures adopted at the Third Plenum of the 20th CPC Central Committee reaffirmed China’s resolve to deepen reforms and expand openness. With a population of 1.4 billion and an ever expanding middle-income people exceeding 400 million, China provides a vast and most promising consumer market. China’s continued efforts for business environment improvement and international expositions like the CIIE (China International Import Expo), CISCE(China International Supply Chain Expo), CICPE(China International Consumer Products Expo) and Global Digital Trade Expo, create unparalleled opportunities for countries all over the world to share the benefit of China’s development in all fields, from high-end manufacturing to modern service industry, from traditional goods to digital products. 

The Chinese government is fully committed to create a market-oriented, law-based and internationalized world-class business environment and cultivate a transparent, stable and predictable policy environment. China’s negative list for foreign investment access has shrunk from the earliest 190 items to  27 items for the piloted free trade zones and 29 items for the rest of the country, and that for the manufacturing sector has been brought down to naught. 

In recent years, the Chinese government has introduced a series of policies to stabilize foreign investment, continuously forging the "Invest in China" brand. Among them building the Hainan Free Trade Port is one of the major strategic measures of reform and opening up in the new era, which has been blueprinted and promoted by President Xi Jinping himself. 

Since 2020, with the leadership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the hardworking and intelligent people of Hainan have bravely taken the lead and broken through the waves. Relying on the super large domestic market and aligning with international high standard economic and trade rules, the building of Hainan Free Trade Port has taken shape and is attracting more and more regional and global enterprises to invest and develop there, presenting a new atmosphere of openness and progress. Today's Hainan Free Trade Port has become a new frontier of China's institutional opening-up, a new hotspot for mutually beneficial regional cooperation and a new engine for promoting economic globalization. 

Since the first visit to China by the former governor of Bavaria Mr. Franz Josef Strauß 50 years ago, the economic and trade exchanges between China and Bavaria have been close, with fruitful results of mutual benefit, highlighting the "highland advantage" in the whole Germany. 

I sincerely hope that friends from the Bavarian business community will continue to play a bridging role and work with Chinese partners to further deepen and solidify the economic and trade cooperation between China and Germany. We warmly welcome your visits to China, especially to Hainan, the largest special economic zone in China, and to experience the vigorous vitality of China's development and join hands with us for an even brighter future of win-win cooperation! 

Thank you all!