Delegation of Female Diplomats from ASEAN Embassies Visited Shanxi Province

The ASEAN-China Centre (ACC) organized the delegation of female diplomats from embassies of ASEAN Member States (AMS) in China to visit Shanxi Province from 18 to 20 March 2019.

On March 18, Mr. Wei Xiaochun, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Shanxi Provincial People’s Congress met with the delegation. Ms. Patcharawan Wongthai and Ms. Pasupha Chinvarasopak, Minister Counsellors of the Thai Embassy, Ms. Rukmini Tri Setiati, Minister Counsellor of Embassy of Indonesia and female diplomats from the embassies of Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar and Viet Nam, as well as Mr. Lyu Ming, Deputy Director-General of Ethnic, Religion and Foreign and Overseas Affairs Committee of the Standing Committee of Shanxi Provincial People’s Congress, Ms. Liang Shujuan, Deputy Director-General of Foreign Affairs Office of the Shanxi Provincial People’s Government, and Ms. Wang Hongliu, Director of General Affairs and Coordination Division of ACC attended the meeting.

Mr. Wei Xiaochun warmly welcomed the delegation to Shanxi. He gave a brief introduction of Shanxi’s economic and social development as well as its achievements of opening-up. With a long history, beautiful natural scenery, rich resources and outstanding regional advantages, Shanxi highly values its exchanges with ASEAN and has conducted good cooperation with the latter in areas of trade and investment as well as people-to-people exchanges. He stressed that Shanxi stands ready to further strengthen the exchanges and cooperation with AMS to achieve mutual benefit and common development under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. Mr. Wei appreciated ACC’s continuous support to Shanxi and praised ACC’s contributions to promote the development of ASEAN-China relations. He hoped that ACC would continue to play the bridging role to further exchanges and cooperation between Shanxi and AMS.

Mrs. PatcharawanWongthai, head of the delegation and the Educational Minister Counsellor of the Thai Embassy, expressed her appreciation to the Shanxi Provincial Government for the considerate arrangement and thanked ACC for organizing the visit. She congratulated on Shanxi’s achievements of social and economic development as well as opening-up. She believed that the delegates would learn more about Shanxi through the visit and play active roles to expand the friendly cooperation between ASEAN and Shanxi.

The delegation visited the Thermal Power Plant of Gemeng International Energy Co., Ltd (GMIE), and learned about the development of the corporation, its brand culture and international cooperation. They also visited workshops, monitoring room and exhibition hall and exchanged views with staff, through which the delegation got a comprehensive understanding of the achievements of the corporation as well as the whole province of Shanxi in new energy development, energy saving and emission reduction.

The delegation also visited Wutai Mountain and Pingyao Ancient City. They had in-depth exchanges with officials from local foreign affairs offices and experienced Shanxi’s history, customs and traditional culture. The delegation expressed great interests in local tourism development especially its tourism cooperation with ASEAN countries, and explored ways to conduct more exchanges and cooperation in relevant fields.

This is the first time for ACC to organize female diplomats from AMS embassies in China to visit a local province outside Beijing. The delegates said that the visit was unforgettable, innovative, enlightening and rich in content, which broadened their mind and horizon. They expressed readiness to make full use of their influences to promote the cooperation with Shanxi in the fields of trade and investment, tourism, education and culture and elevate the local practical cooperation between ASEAN and China to a new height.