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With Wang Yingfan, Vice-chairman of the Foreign Affairs
Committee of the National People's Congress of China
With Li Peiyuan, Director General of the Buruea of Senior
Officials Training in the Central Committee of the Communist Party
of China.
With Ambassador Wang Guangya – Ambassador of China to the UN |
Nirj Deva sees a constructive working relationship between China, the EU
and the United States as essential if we are to have peace and
prosperity in the world for the next fifty years or more. He employs a
Mandarin-speaking Chinese assistant in his office in the European
Parliament to keep him aware of developments in China, and to enable him
to communicate with China.
- Please click
here to view details of Nirj's
recent visit to China (August 2006)
MEP
appraises President Hu Jintao’s visits to European three countries
Xinhua Net Brussels news on November 9th (Reporter Wu Liming)
European parliament foreign affairs committee member Mr. Deva on 9th
when interviewed by the Xinhua News Agency reporter, highly appraises
the Chinese President Hu Jintao visits European three countries, he says
this visit will certainly improve and deeply develop the EU-China
relationship.
Mr. Deva said, Hu Jintao will improve EU-China's friendship by visiting
these 3 EU countries-- UK, Germany and Span. This will make EU-China
strategy partnership to exploit in depth. In recent years, EU-China
relationship development has been "extremely impressive and profound".
The potential of EU-China relationship development is huge and well
prospected.
Mr. Deva pointed out, the first stop in Chinese President Hu Jintao' EU
visit is the currently presidency country-- UK. It is the first time
during 6 years for Chinese governmental leaders to visit UK
governmentally. The British Prime Minister Tony Blair has expressed that
he desires the improvement of EU-China bilateral relations. This
indicates, Both EU and China leaders prize the EU-China relationship
development. The EU-China relationship is continually becoming closer
day by day.
Mr. Deva was born in Sri Lanka; he holds dual nationality--British and
the Sri Lankan. In recent years, Mr. Deva has been positively pushing on
EU-Asia relationship in the European parliament
(Manuscript source: Xinhua net)
(Author: Wu Liming)
(Edition: Li Yanhua).
On 29th September 2005 Nirj Deva spoke as follows in the European
Parliament Plenary session, commenting on the report by the Committee on
International Trade, on prospects for trade relations between the EU and
China (2005/2015(INI)) (A6-0262/2005).
Nirj Deva (PPE-DE). – Mr President,
"I can only support this report very reluctantly because the tone of
it is not quite right. We have to understand that China is a great
country with a population three times the size of the European Union. It
became a nation state 2,000 years ago and has remained one until today.
China has a civilisation that is much older than most of ours, and our
relationship with China is a relationship of equals in which neither
side has the right to lecture the other.
China has its own way of doing things. We must continue to find ways of
cooperating with China and if each side of the relationship tries hard
enough to understand and accommodate the basic concerns of the other, by
looking ahead in a proactive way, the future is bright. But if we fail,
we will be plunged into damaging and acrimonious competition.
The recent crisis over textile imports should be a lesson to us all.
Today the EU-China relationship is in a very active and productive phase
and bilateral relationships are in a more mature, healthy and stable
condition than ever. We have to develop this with diligence and
sensitivity, striving always to find common ground and to minimise our
inevitable differences. We need to maximise our trading synergies and
work together on the big international problems of our age, including
terrorism, nuclear proliferation and the fight against hunger and
disease.
None of this will be easy but there is a very relevant proverb in China:
Shi Shang Wu Nan Shi, Zhi Pa You Xin Ren. I will try to translate: it
says that there is nothing so difficult in this world that it cannot be
resolved by people with high aspirations.
I have no doubt that there are such people on both sides of our
relationship and I look forward to a bright and mutually rewarding
future in cooperation with China."
(Applause)
The Commissioner ( Mr. Laszlo Kovacs) replied:
"In dealing with China, a country of enormous potential and stark
contradictions, the European Union has two options. The first is the
schoolmaster attitude: to exert pressure on China to comply. I do not
think that will work. The second is to establish a partnership, to
cooperate with China and make it listen to our concerns and take them on
board – to engage with China and not try to isolate it. This, I believe,
is a promising option.
Nirj Deva has received wide coverage in the Chinese press, as follows:
欧洲议会外交委员会委员德瓦日前在接受新华社记者采访时高度评价中国政府致力于实施
"建设社会主义新农村" 政策，认为这是中国政府正确的战略决策。
德瓦说，中国的改革开放起自农村，现在又回到农村，这是一种明智的战略选择。乡村发展了，社会才能整体进步。德瓦提出采取激励措施发展乡镇企业、发展农村基础设施、免费教育与医疗以及建立对农村老人的社会保障体系等一系列关于农村发展的建议。
德瓦认为，几千年来保持着自己文化的中国还有很大的潜力，中国需要挖掘这种潜力。德瓦列举了一个数字：
1722年，中国的国民生产总值占全球总体的22.3% ，1903年时下降到 6%，目前大约是14% 。
他说，中国要实现民族的伟大复兴必须发展乡村，如果新农村战略取得成效，中国的前途不可估量。
来源：新华网
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