PRESIDENT MARY McAleese addressed a gathering of students at Beijing’s prestigious Renmin University yesterday, and in a wide-ranging speech hailed the growing closeness between China and Ireland.
Ireland recently celebrated 30 years of diplomatic relations with China, and the President spoke of how the relationship between Ireland and China had expanded to include exchanges in many areas of political and trade activity, as well as education, food and agriculture, tourism and investment.
“The 30 years since diplomatic ties were established between China and Ireland have seen great economic and social developments in both countries, and also the development and maturing of our bilateral relationship,” she told the university gathering.
There are 115 Irish companies with a stake in China, many of them in the education sector, which marks a tripling in the last five years, and China is Ireland’s seventh most important trading partner. Trade with China is worth about €4 billion annually.
“Irish companies are investing in China and Chinese companies have begun to invest in Ireland, which is the gateway to the European Union,” she said.
There was scope for greater co-operation in education, culture, software and high technology, biotechnology and the life sciences, environmental matters, food, agriculture and animal husbandry. She noted how the two Confucius Institutes in Ireland were feeding a surge in interest in studying Chinese in Ireland.
One of the areas which the Chinese are particularly interested in is the way Ireland’s economy has been lifted from poverty and high emigration 50 years ago, to an economy based on education, a skilled workforce, and high technology and software.
“We attracted foreign investment into Ireland, and secured full and active membership of the European Union in 1973. China’s policy of reform and opening up, which was officially launched just one year before Ireland and China established diplomatic relations, has been of historic significance, not only for China and its people but also for the world,” she said.
President McAleese moves on to Shanghai today, where she will attend the Shanghai World Expo’s Irish National Pavilion Day tomorrow. The Expo will also be attended by Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan.
The visit has included meetings with vice president Xi Jinping, widely tipped to succeed President Hu Jintao in two years’ time.