Denmark will make continuous efforts to strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation and deepen the comprehensive strategic partnership with China, Danish Foreign Minister Villy Søvndal said Tuesday in a written interview with the Chinese post, Xinhua.
Søvndal made the remarks on the official visit by Yu Zhengsheng, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
“We hope that the visit of Chairman Yu will not only broaden and consolidate high level contacts between our countries but also help push concrete cooperation in various areas to the benefit of our people,” he said.
Søvndal said that Denmark attaches great importance to Yu’s visit, which came only one year after former Chinese president Hu Jintao’s state visit to Denmark in June 2012.
“Denmark has a comprehensive and constantly developing bilateral cooperation with China,” Søvndal said, highlighting the inter-governmental agreements signed during the state visit in areas such as climate and energy, environment, education, agriculture and food safety.
He spoke highly of renewable energy as one of the areas where Sino-Danish cooperation has achieved remarkable progress.
“Denmark has a rather unique experience to share with China. Danish economic growth in the last three decades has been achieved without growing energy consumption, and with significant reductions in emissions of CO2 and other pollutants,” he explained.
Another example is the cooperation in research and education. The Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research was inaugurated in Beijing last year under the cooperation of eight Danish universities and the Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In addition, Denmark launched in May 2012 an Emerging Markets Strategy aimed exclusively at China to strengthen bilateral cooperation within several prioritized areas such as the green energy sector, clean water solutions, food safety and agricultural products.
“We will continue discussions on how to further cooperation in economic sectors where we have mutual interest,” he said, adding that his meeting with Yu will also go into details on the potentials for concrete cooperation in areas like healthcare and transportation.
Bilateral relations between China and Denmark have undergone positive developments since the establishment of the comprehensive strategic partnership in 2008. Denmark is the only Nordic country that has such a partnership with China.
“We see the visit of Yu Zhengsheng as an expression of China’s continued interest in strengthening bilateral ties and cooperation with Denmark — an interest which is fully reciprocated,” he said.
He noted that a number of high level visits from both sides, including his own official visit to China in November 2012, bear witness of the great potentials for mutually beneficial cooperation between the two sides.
“This year, China and Denmark celebrate the fifth anniversary of our strategic partnership,” he said, stressing that Yu’s visit is a good occasion to reconfirm the two nations’ deep friendship and strategic partnership.
Besides, Søvndal believes that Yu’s visit will also help boost the Sino-EU relationship in both scope and depth.
“Denmark supports and highly prioritizes this cooperation and the promotion of EU-China relations in general,” he said.
Source: shanghaidaily.com
