 On occasion when we are inviting our ambassador, you, Zhao Yong, if I pronounce it correctly. Thank you. You are recently appointed ambassador here to this country. You follow in a long line of very influential Chinese ambassadors who have left a very big impression on the people in this country. The relationship between Ireland and China is one that we in Ireland consider to be of considerable importance. The rise of China over the last 20-25 years into the 21st century is something that we have observed with admiration and with awe to become the soon to become the world's largest economic power. One considers where China started from in the 1950s is an extraordinary journey that we look at and consider with a lot of admiration. You are most welcome, sir. Thank you. You have many people who are with you in the embassy here, and on behalf of the Institute for International and European Affairs, I'd like to ask you two addresses. Thank you, Chairman, Mr. Rory Quinn, Mr. Ken Kondagen, distinguished friends and guests, and ladies and gentlemen. First of all, I really would like to thank Chairman Mr. Quinn again for his kind words. So sometimes we use, as my credential by my president to your, his Excellency President, Mr. Higgins said, I'm the ambassador, plonitenary and extraordinary. So sometimes I take the liberty to say on behalf of China's government and China's people, I would like to thank you Chairman and Mr. Rory and Quinn and this Institute, IAEA, to give me this very, very good opportunity to do this presentation. This is also my first official presentation in this wonderful and highly respected Institute. So today my, the title or the theme of my address as indicated here is, this is my homework. This is what you have given me, China's current and future economic development. And I follow these guidelines and I give my address or title, Chinese Transformation and Rejuvenation and put China's economic development and reform and opening up in a larger, a little bit larger contest. And the keyword of my presentation as well as the goals of China's development as our president Xi Jinping called it in the first year of he assumed his office as president of China, said is China's dream, a dream from which the Chinese people have been striving for over a century. It is also an ongoing grand cause that we refer to as China's modernization drive or simply put the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. As you all know, China's reform as you see it, China's reform and opening up comes not in one day. It is a long process. Since I think since as early as 1840, just about the time when this country had the farming and we had something worse, 1841 it is the year of the first what we called opium war with UK. China system, of course we had a lot of humiliated, bad defeat and China from that time on we found our sovereignty, integrity of the land and our rights gradually eroded and eroded and China come down for what we call a semi-colonial, semi-feudal state. So since then the old feudal monarchy in China had collapsed that is from, they struggled from 1840 until 1911 when we had what we called a 1911 revolution led and lead led by Dr. Seng Ya Sen. The old monarchy collapsed and the country is now set up and the whole land was trapped in the turmoil and chaos by what we called is the time of the warfare among the warlords. Compounding the situation where the foreign invasions and attempt to divide and swallow the land one after another and it is until the Japan want to by himself to occupy and suppress the whole land which also shocked the whole world and that was the time of the Second World War what we called the war of resistance against Japan, military's invasion. People during all those from 1840 to up until 1949, 100 years, 109 years people lived in extreme poverty, starvation and oppression, suffering repeated and increasing outside depression, exploitation and bullying and whatever hardships you can imagine. The Chinese were known as a segment of the East Asia, the country and the civilization as a whole are on the verge of perishing. A song got very popular among all the Chinese people in the deepest dire situation during the Second World War. Later on that song become what we have until now and I think in future our nationalism. One of the lines of the song goes, the Chinese nation faces its greatest peril. After generations persisting efforts, the People's Republic of China as we know now was at long last established in 1st October 1949. For the first time in over 109 years, we earned the historical opportunity to reconstruct our nation, our country and to preserve and develop our culture and civilization. The devastated old China had already gone forever and a nation that has more than 5,000 years of history of civilization realized is what we call the Vana. The Chinese people were so proud and happy that they affectionately called the newly born People's Republic of China as New China. So as we talk about China, it's one China policy, a lot of China, but actually it is one China and we call the People's Republic of China as New China. Because before the New China was founded, it is the civil war between KMT forces and the CCP forces, Chinese Communist Party forces and what we call KMT's way of planning to build China. There are some good people in it and we call it old China. They want to build China in old way, we said. And later on, we called our People's Republic of China as New China. Now, from that time on, we are determined to build our country into a self-reliant, independent, democratic, free, strong and prosperous nation. And we call the whole process. Now, as we have the Chinese government present, we call it the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics or the great rejuvenation of a known civilization. Looking back, along all these years, we have experienced different governments, different way of the approach, how to modernize China, how to get rid of the poverty, how to really find a way. We learned from Soviet Union, we learned from the Europe, we learned from Northern America, we learned from everybody. And we found when we were aware, we never from whoever body, whoever and wherever we learned from, we really have to stick to China's situation. So it is always the balance of opening up and to apply what we have learned outside to the China's situation. This is what we all, we come all along now up to the current situation. Really, we, in recording all this, we are proudly say, now we are happy and proudly say that Chinese people have really made tremendous achievements. And we have earned our recognition by the peoples in the world. Now let me say a few words about China's reform and opening up. Our, what we called, I try, when I do this presentation, sometimes you find I use some English phrases. And actually, I'm using the English translation of what our public policy indicates. So as you hear this kind of expression more, when you converse with your Chinese friends, you may get your mind and ears more familiar with those expressions. Because this is so different to two cultures. European cultures and China's cultures. And in future, we can have more exchanges of this so that here you are all the opinion leaders and the public political diplomatic leaders. We together, we have, I believe, we have the responsibility and opportunity to help our two peoples to bridge over. So sometimes later on, I will welcome you to ask further questions as to whatever I use here, the terms, expressions, and phrases, too. China's opening and what we called opening up and reform started in earnest in 1978. Deng Xiaoping, Mr. Deng, we said architect of China's opening and reform. Presumed his position as what the foreign media called paramount leader of China, quote. In 1970, about 1976 or 1977. So all these three years, China was thinking how we would proceed. We are going to go old way or we are going to have a new page. And in 1978, the Central Committee of China made a huge and a very important decision that we want to do this comprehensive, whole-scale reform and the open up. We cannot do it old way like we did in the Cultural Revolution and the Cultural Revolution. So from 1978 till now, it is about 39 years and next year is 40 years. All these 40 years, our overarching guiding principle for our efforts is to join hands actually from all our friends and partners in the world and open China's door to build a community of what now, our president Xi Jinping called it, build a community of shared future for human being together. I think that means we want to build China to have our China rebuilt and reconstructed and to realize China's modernization by always open China's door to the outside world. In so doing, we have been emphasizing peaceful development, win-win cooperation and the common prosperity. This is all the more obvious since 1978. Our reform and opening up has really achieved more than we hire and quicker and greater than even China's people expected. In the beginning, Mr. Deng said, that's on the 1970, on the 1980s level. Less every 10 years, we should double China's GDP. So by 1980, 1990, China should double. By 20, 1990, 2000, we should double again. So I hope every 10 years, we should double our GDP national production. If you learn, I think you know, if you keep a 7% GDP growth, normally you'll get eight years to get doubled. You will get 8% GDP growth annually. You get seven years, you get doubled. So in his mind, we need to at least keep 6% to 8% growth every year, to reach at least every 10 years to get our GDP doubled. By opening, by reform, by all the measures we can think of. So actually, you all know what we have achieved. From that time on, we always, in the first 25 years, we achieved 13 to 15 annual growth, percentage annual growth. And the later part of this 30 to 40 years, we achieved 9% annual growth. So we found ourselves always reaching our goal ahead of time. So central committee have to, the government have to re-planning and redeveloping our development plans. I give you some examples on what we have achieved. In the 1980s, we put it in a very face-in and a step-by-step way. We know China is so huge. You cannot apply one policy to the whole country. So we get a lot of what are called pilot schemes or on trial base. And they gave the autonomous rights to the local governors to say, we give you the free hand, you can try whatever you want. So in the early 1980s, five special economic zones were established. Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou, in Guangdong province, Xiamen province, and the entire Hainan province. This is on the southern coastlines. So Ambassador O'Leary, if you went there, in China, you go to that places, those people feel they are the forefathers of China's reform. They take a lot of bold measures in the early on when many Chinese still think of the old approach to improve their lives. In 1980, we decided to open 14 more cities, which were designated as open coast cities covering China's 18,000 square kilometers in coastal areas. One of these cities is always by millions, by 5 million to 10 million Chinese people. So after this, almost 300 million Chinese people are in the opening policy and reform policy. After 1985, seven bigger regions, including just now, some people ask me, Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta were designated as economic development zones. Those zones together with the 14 coastal cities constituted what we call a coastal economic belt. Actually, even now, this area occupied 60% to 70% of China's trade, economic, and investment of the whole nation. In 1990, the Yangtze River open belt that is all the way from Shanghai 2,000 miles all the way back to our west, Qinghai province, just next door to Tibet. Those zones together was established and the Pudong new area in Shanghai. The east of Shanghai, Shanghai the whole population is about 18 million to 20 million people. So they carved the, this city is located in Arpan Huangpu River. So the old Shanghai is in the left side of the river. There's no place to development. For the further development, it is an inner city problem. So they completely moved to the new area to the right side of the river, right bank of the river. We called east side of the river. Now, this area is the most, is still the vanguard and the most advanced region in China's further reform and deeper reform. Now we get Premier Li Keqiang. Now he has his what we call the new special experimental development zone designated in Shanghai. To try, actually people say China want to, in that area, want to try all they have known in the TPP and the TIPP and the TI or by BIA or BIE, all those in the negotiation. But to put it this way, we want to try everything we think is already fit into China's situation and want to accumulate it, experience in advance when it is applied, it is going to be applied to the whole country or maybe to the whole region or to the, some other countries are murmuring they are trying new ways to have further free trade and investment and a way to improve our global economy as we see how to go with both the opportunities and the challenges of globalization. This is my personal understanding of the recent development. After 1992, a number of border region cities and capital cities of all inland provinces were opened up. That means, you see China, we have North East China, we have Northern China, West, Wild Wild West, Xinjiang, Tibet, Yunnan, Guizhou and you border on India, Southeast Asia and the Northern Mongolia and now we want all the people benefit from our reform and opening policy. So we designated some other regions, some reform measures to them. The year of 2001, witness a big turning point, of course you all know, we joined WTO. What is remarkable is that China has learned from the successful experience of people all over the world, including the great and smart creative Irish people. We adopted a lot of wonderful ideas and successful practices from Shandong Free Zone in Ireland in designing our special economic zone. So many of my senior leading people in China's government, they told me actually that they have that inspiration and ideas of to have this what we call special economic zones or special development zones and they modeled first on your innovation and creative thinking or leadership in Shandong area. So there are two places Chinese people remembered very fondly. One is here with Shandong, although you can say any Shandong is whether, how is this future and all but the Chinese think of very fondly of Shandong and another is what I was ambassador in Doha is small places but it is in Doha, we get a stamp of China's membership of WTO. So a lot of people went to Doha, he said ambassador here, I must go to, there's a hotel there and in that hotel, Chinese finally in 2001 joined as a member of WTO. So China think of this every step of the way to join the international community, to go with this globalization with very pleasant and courageous mind and efforts. Up to now, China has attracted 1.7 trillion US dollars of foreign investment and at the same time, China has made more than 1.2 trillion US dollars of direct investment in other countries and regions. While making strides towards its modernization goals, China has made tremendous contribution to the world's economic development too. So here I give you several examples, perhaps not them all, but it will be interesting to know. Four decades of China's success raised the Chinese people's living standards by a dramatic margin. For example, China's GDP grew from 218.5 billion US dollars to 18.5 billion. In 1978 to in 1926 last year, 11.2 trillion US dollars, an increase of more than 50 times in 38 years. China's annual trade grew from 20.6 billion US dollars in the same year to 3.7 trillion US dollars, nearly 180 times. Our per capita gross national income grew from the same year about from $200 to nearly $8,000 up 40 times. So of course you can see there's some difference there. We have to use some other, we have received the revenue to further do our investment to improve our country's infrastructure and some other social and educational and cultural development. China has also managed to provide food, clothing and housing for more than 1.3 billion people while lifting over 700 million people out of poverty. I don't know the exact number and the percentage. I think China in the Millennium Plan of the United Nations and according to World Bank, the poverty lifting, China achieved lion's share of all the humans. I think it's most of the global people lifting out of poverty, a lot of them are in China, among this 700 million. Now we have, last year by this year's number, we have 30 million people left still in that poverty. Our goal is by 2020 we completely solve this problem and to get all those people above the poverty line. It is very hard because some people already they cannot even work and a lot of different conditions and their living conditions cannot even grow anything. So you have to think of a lot of special measures. We see there are great potential and bright future for China's economic development. Under the guidance and the leadership of President Xi Jinping, China is to be continually staying focused on the top priority of development and deeply implementing its 13th five-year plan, economic and social development plan from 2016 to 2020. If you now talk to Chinese people and what they actually do economically or in terms of economic social development, we do under the guidance of this plan. I want to emphasize is this plan is not what in the traditional academic economics textbook to say it is like a planning economy, the demanding economy from the old, what kind of ever kind of socialist or Soviet model. This plan, it is all for reference of the local governance and government. It is not demand them to do it. They just give a list or a list of index and a list of goals to say this is the general goal of the nation and you can have whatever measure you do to fit in your plan with this goals in reference. So it is not what we call in the planning economy or demanding economy to say it is compulsive or it is a must that you must follow this plan exactly line by line, figure by figure. So we give a lot of allowance and you can adapt your real actual situation in the province, in the sectors and to see we work together to work for a general and targeted goals. And another thing I want to say is in this plan the central government put forward what we say five new concepts, innovation, coordination, greenness, openness, and sharing. Some of them have been always there like openness and coordination. But what is emphasized is particularly emphasized personally as I understand is innovation, greenness, and sharing. Sharing have a fairer, fairer, and just society. People let people share the benefits and the results and the wealth of the achievements of our reform and opening up. Greenness and innovation, in the early those 30, 40 years we get a vast scale and a lot of investment, a lot of export and pull and push of the economy up so much. But we cannot just continue this way. We realize that the global economy and the national economy is a balanced one. China now, we want more emphasize on the big economy more friendly, environmental friendly, greener, and balanced with the global market. We now we put a lot of new efforts to boost the China's domestic market to let people consume and to build their education hospitals national, secure the health better. So in future this is indeed a time of opportunity for other countries to look at this change of what we call the transformation of China's society and the change of China's restructure of the way and approach we do our economic development. So now our growth rate indeed is coming down a bit. We purposely, we don't want to have, just continue to have that quantitative investment and input and to let's see how many factories we have built, how many new things are there. And we put more emphasis on the quality of the growth. We have projected China's GDP growth this year as 6.5%. Still pretty high, but it's compared with double digit and 9, 10, 11 growth rate. It is dramatically coming down a bit. The first quarter recorded a 9.6.9% expansion. Of course on the basis of the now 11 trillion dollars economic scale, this 6.5% growth if realized is still a very impressive scale. Looking to the future, we also have our what we call two centenary goals. Two 100-year goals. Two 100-year goals. This is, on the one hand it is symbolic, but on the other hand it is a combination and it is another, say maybe a breaking point to see the improvement of China's economy. One goal is by 2021, when by 2021 we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the CCP foundation, funding, China's GDP and per capita income will be doubled on the basis of 2010. I think 2010, this goal is not very high. Maybe we can realize it next year. The second goal sets for 2049. This is by the year of the, by the year 100 years celebration of China's, our People's Republic of China was established. That is 1949. So from 1949 to 2049 is another 100 years benchmark. We'll get what we called a strong democratic civilized harmonious modern socialist country will be completed. People say this is actually what our Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader, or what we call the architect of China's reform and opening up, he said he used all the Chinese way to express his goal. And the goal what we know now is to build China we have already there to have what we called what a better off society, a better off society is the society what you see in China now. So he would say another, in his time he said another 70, 50 or 100 years we may get China as a even better society, this is some other benchmark he set up, some economists said that would be what we called middle level developed country level. We are still far from you, you are the top level of developed country, you are more than per capita income, more than all the other European countries like Germany, France, Italy, UK, they are all per capita income, they are all under about 40,000. Yours is 60,000, so hopefully by then we would have 10 to 20,000, that would be, if it is 20,000 it would be double what we have, more than double what we have in China in the GDP, the total, way ahead of course in total in any other countries. So China we have really the different situation we have so many people there, we have to feed them is 1.3 billion, while you look at the whole scale China is number two or number one, number three, you look at the per capita income or per capita GDP we feel we still have a long way to go, while you increase the people's, you improve people's life you have to, you need to take care of the society, you take care of the nature, you take care of the seasons and the water, it is very demanding and a lot of challenge. For that we need to really learn, continue by the opening up and reform, continue to learn from our partners and the friends in the world, particularly from Ireland. A few words about our China-Ireland relations. This is really very encouraging and I like to say very encouraging, very strong relations and also very encouraging, very promising with great potential, with more and more friends and the people supporting and assist the development growth of the relations. I think you see it is always under the care and guidance of the top leaders of both countries. 2012, now the president, then the vice president Xi Jinping visited here and 2014 your president there and in between we have your prime minister in China, our prime minister, 2015 visited this country. I went to the farm, he went this weekend. I said I finally can count because we signed MOU, our minister of AQSIQ with your minister of agriculture, the MOU for importing Irish beef and horse and some other food feed and a lot of long list. So now I want to personally share this good news to, oh, that is really a big family. Parents, grandparents, uncles, nanny, and the four or five children and the two dogs, we all together celebrate the good time of the relations. And I also said, he said this is all the cows, all cuffs were all cuffs when your prime minister two years ago came here. Now they all began to produce milk. Very, very impressive. And I talk with the people there. They are different parties from Fenefo and from Fenegeo and from the local counselors. They are all in one, in unison, not at the same time, but they are all great. They all, we share the common ground that everybody want to promote these relations. Everybody want to see the further development. And they keep giving me the proposals, suggestions. And some of them actually have been to China many times. And it's indeed very encouraging. And also I went to some other places in Mayo and Clare, Tipperry, Cork, everywhere. Some big and very impressive projects under active consideration, like some companies in China are already considering the joint hands with your government here and companies to try to design and build the hydroelectricity plant integrated with what you are best at, this windmill power generation. So we are going to build a big battery for the extra windmill power to integrate it with the grill here. So all these examples, we didn't expect to have two years, three years before. And we have some other, all levels, different areas, exchanges, and cooperation. From education level, we have almost like a big, biggest Confucius Institute here. And the encouraging news is the Department of Education. In your five-year plan, I hope it is not a demanding, compulsive plan. It's a reference plan. In 10 years to say to put Chinese onto the living cell itinerary, many parents and mothers say they hope in two years or three years to see Chinese language teaching already for our learning lovely young boys and girls. There are some other examples, like in the cultural level, in the investment level. Last weekend, we have the chairman and the executive of the Hainan airliner. They are really, really active. And they are keen on continuing their presence here. I asked him how they have seen this land and how they have done the investment. They have actually, by numbers, after I came here, they have put fresh, extra 10 billion US dollars into Avalon and through Avalon, acquired CIT, and become the number one globally number three aircraft and financial leasing group in the world. Actually, this is the best example of the combination of China and Ireland. Because most of the employees are Irish. And even the top CEO, a lady or a slaty, Mr. Slaty, top CEO and a lot of expertise are from Ireland. They are very hopeful and very confident that here they will expand their business here. So with that, I want to stop here. I can put a list longer. But indeed, we depend on all of you. And we together, we work for this better and very prosperous. I want to add one thing before I receive any questions. That is, we also enjoyed more and more mutual trust and the coordination and the mutual support, understanding in our even foreign policies. Bilaterally, we always have very good support from your Department of Foreign Trade. And we discuss our discuss, the areas we are discussing is expanding, are expanding. And we compare notes, we exchange our deeper thoughts, and we see more and more common grounds. So we see how to maintain better the peace and the stability of the world, really. And also, maintain and keep the momentum of our relations with Europe. We are to see the continuous development of the European integration. We want to see the good growth of European Union. With that, of course, we believe our relation with Ireland will benefit. And we also want to see stable, prosperous, and strong Europe in the world stage. Thank you very much.