China proposed to share the success and opportunities with the world

This is the first time that I’m for longer in China. I visited China before of course. And I saw Beijing and other cities. Now it is a different story because I spend my whole time here and I’m trying to visit many parts of the country.

So I was free to travel and I really went to different places in China within this one year. Starting with, I don't know, Yunnan, Kunming and the borders with Myanmar and Vietnam to the south to Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Shanghai of course many times. And Hebei, the province around Beijing. So really the country is very colorful and very different.

Today we have blue sky and this is really very enjoyable.Thank you for shedding such important light on the development of Beijing and on China. We are trying with my team to foster the relations between our two countries.

And I’m quite sure that we’ll come during coming year to a conclusion of a formal document describing our partnership, which is in the relations of China very important.

This year will be for us quite remarkable, because it will be, we'll have 75 years of establishing diplomatic relations between China, and that time Czechoslovakia. I think we'll develop our contact and communication on the modern technologies and modern part of the industry and science.

Maybe you could not know, but Slovakia is the biggest car producer in the world, per capital of course. We are producing, with 5 million inhabitants, 1 million car a year.It is quite a big number with different brands of our cars.

It's a very long list. Starting with Porsche, Audi, Volkswagen, Skoda, Citroen, Kia, Jaguar, Land Rover. And I have good news for our bilateral relations that your car producing factory Geely is making an investment in east Slovakia.

And since 2026, new electric vehicles will be produced also in Slovakia from the side of the Chinese producer. So this is a very positive development. And it is creating a lot of possibilities to closer cooperation in this very modern part of the industry.

We have a huge trade exchange with China. Last year, it was more than ten and a half billion (euros). China is the first trading partner of Slovakia in Asia. China proposed to share the success and opportunities with the world.

Obviously, it is for many countries bringing positive results. We have been creating the possibility of our trade and railway communication with China.We need for that cooperation. In these fields, we all hope that the peace will come.

And we can cooperate in a positive atmosphere.On the other hand, we are working on possibilities to have a connection in the sphere of the air transport from some Chinese cities.

So I hope that we can arrange that the Chinese tourists can visit our beautiful country and can enjoy stay there.With a huge number of customers in China, we’ll have the possibilities to have some brands of Slovak products.

Then, also the possibilities of tourism in Slovakia. Concerning the EU-China cooperation, we have had now for some days, the summit after covid time the first summit in person. And it brought on the table important questions we should solve together with China.

Slovakia is contributing to this positive process of our good relations with China. Second, I would mention is the cooperation in the sphere of the climate change. We have now the successful COP meeting lately in one of the Asian countries.

This direction will go together and we appreciate China is doing a lot to achieve the goals in 2030 and 2060 to be carbon-neutral country.

Economy, digital development, and so forth, Slovakia is quite strong in the part of the modern technologies. And China is a key player in that regard.

So we can cooperate very closely in that field. We have already Slovak companies, which are not so big. But I will mention that it's a spinoff, for example, of Photoneo, who are dealing with very precise electronic parts, which are used by the Chinese customers and they are very successful on the Chinese market.

On the other side, maybe I’ll also mention a very successful investment of Chinese company in Slovakia. This is the company Leyard who is producing big screens, all the screens you see in the shopping centers, or even they have been delivering the screens for the Winter Olympic Games.

They have been produced by this company, and they have an investment in Slovakia. From that part, they are covering the whole European and north America. But it is also a very, highly developed technology. And we are glad that we are a very good corporation. Its investment is enlarging these days actually. The CEO was in Slovakia discussing this project.These are very concrete confirmations of our good cooperation.

China is a fascinating country, also from the point of view of culture and I’m enjoying all visits to the different parts of China. And I always visit museums, galleries and wondering about your long and high-quality culture alive you have. We are in close contact with numeral galleries and gala and museums.

Author：Peter Lizak