Mr. Minister,

Mr. President,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I feel much honored to be invited to this meeting and to be here with you all distinguished guests.

Firstly please allow me to congratulate on this first Annual General Meeting of DCBF.

Looking back, at the very beginning of DCBF, we only had 14 founder members. But now after just a little more than one year of development, we already have more than 90 members, which is very near to our set target of 125 members.

So we have reason to believe that the founding of DCBF itself meets the need of reality. More and more Danish companies, including the present, are rushing to business opportunities in Chinese Markets. Of course, the fast development can't do without the painstaking work by the all the people within DCBF.

I think Danish business circle has made a wise decision.

China's GDP grew from 140 billion USD in the early years of opening up to 2.71 trillion USD in 2006, an average annual growth rate of 9.6% over 30 years and a rise in global ranking from the 15th to the 4th.

More importantly, our economy has entered a new stage of growth. More and more attention is put to the quality of development in stead of speed. The central government is determined to change our economic growth pattern and optimize our structure with greater efforts. In the coming years Hi-technology and innovation must play a more important role; the energy consumption per unit GDP must be greatly reduced; we should seek the balance between economic development and environmental protection.

By this means today's Chinese market is even more inviting to Danish companies than ever before. You enjoy great advantage in innovation, energy efficiency and renewable energy. You also have rich experience and mature mechanism in basing your economic development on the above points. These two things we need most. Danish companies can have a brilliant future in Chinese market.

The past concrete figures can also demonstrate my point.

Up to now, almost all Danish important companies have invested in China. According to the statistics from China's side, by the end of 2006, there had been 433 established Danish invested enterprises altogether. The contractual foreign investment reached 2.21 billion US dollars. The actualized foreign investment reached 880 million US dollars. I also know that many Danish people believe the exact figure may be bigger than that. Still according to Chinese statistics, the total bilateral cargo trade volume increased 2.3 times from 1.52billion USD in 2001 to 4.96billion USD in 2006, with an annual growth rate of 20%.

Besides cargo trade, our service trade is also of a considerable scale. Take shipping industry as an example, according to the statistics of Danish Ship-owners' Association, the total revenue of the Danish shipping companies from Chinese market (including Hong Kong) from January to November in 2006 was around 2.08 billion.

Encouraged by great profits made by larger Danish companies in China, more and more small and medium sized enterprises are becoming active in Chinese market. In the Nordic Industrial Park (NIP) of Ningbo, there settled around 20 such Danish companies.

To be frank, I think in certain degrees, DCBF is of particular importance to SMEs. Compared with bigger enterprises, SMEs don't have so much knowledge in China's traditional culture, trade and investment policy, area differences, and so on.

In more than one year, DCBF has carried out all kinds of activities, seminars, meetings and social events to promote Sino-Danish trade and economic developments.

DCBF is keeping close contact with Chinese embassy. So that it acts as an important bridge between Chinese economic visiting group and Danish enterprises for them to exchange views and explore opportunities.

According to my knowledge, DCBF has been arranging the innovation conference since last year. With its far-reaching theme, big scale and high level, if the conference can take place, it can benefit a lot to our bilateral economic ties. My colleague and I fully support the initiative.

When talking about promoting our bilateral ties, Danish government also has played an important role. Last October, in Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs' globalization report, it states clearly that Denmark and EU should attach greater importance to Asian countries including China and India. Two ambassador-level of diplomats will be sent to Danish embassy in Beijing to strengthen our bilateral political and trade relations.

As the wholly representative of China to Demark, I welcome all levels of exchange and cooperation, no matter that is between governments or enterprises. Our embassy will do our best to support DCBF and serve all the Danish enterprises who are interested in Chinese markets.

Next month, the Energy Conference will be co-hosted by Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chinese NDRC (the National Development and Reform Commission). This conference will draw many energy experts from our two governments, research institutes and enterprises. I am sure it will be a great success and I hope more DCBF members will join it.

That's all and thank you.