2021 was the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic relationship between China and Belgium. Jan Hoogmartens, Belgium ambassador to China, said during an interview with Chinese media that he expected to push forward the sustainable development between China and Belgium with the opportunity of the 50th anniversary.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic relationship, Belgium embassy in China recently launched a series of movie named “Belgium-China 50 Years: Stories of Friendship”. Jan Hoogmartens said that the movie had multiple Belgium elements, including chocolate, beer, soccer and racing pigeon. Many celebrations could only be held online because of the pandemic, but according to the ambassador, Chinese liked digital products and online events could influence many Chinese provinces and cities besides Beijing to promote people-to-people communication. “Through these event, we hope we can discover warm short stories between our two countries to enable our people to get closer. We hope that we can get inspiration for better mutual-understanding. As an ambassador, my mission is to have a closer relationship.” said the ambassador.
In the past 50 years, China-Belgium communication had been continuously developing and trade and economic cooperation had been closer. Jan Hoogmartens found during his visit to various places of China that many Belgium enterprises were already integrated into China’s industrial chain with abundant result in logistics, chemical engineering and medicine. He said that Belgium enterprises invested and set up enterprises in China since the start of the reform and opening up. Alcatel Lucent, Ltd was the first joint venture enterprises in the communication industry since the reform and opening-up. Xian Janssen Pharmaceutical Ltd. was one of the first group of Belgium enterprises set up in China. In 2019, Belgium princess Astrid led a large-scale trade and economic delegation to China composed of more than 600 people, indicating that Belgium business circle was interested in China. He said that Belgium was home to not only delicious chocolate, but also thousands kinds of beers, so that “everyone can find a flavor he likes”.
Jan Hoogmartens also said that Chinese enterprises would be welcome in Belgium. He said that there were already Chinese enterprises setting up e-commerce trade center and investing in logistics infrastructure. “it’s important for Belgium.” Belgium was a highly globalized country. The headquarter of EU was in Brussels, the capital of Belgium. Many companies situated their headquarters in Brussels, not only because of the EU, but also because of the advantageous geographical position of Belgium. The country located in the center of the Europe, so it’s an important transfer place for air, marine and land transportation and it connected East Asia, Middle East, North Africa and North America. “I hope Chinese investors could make full use of the advantage of Belgium.”
When it came to the anticipation of future cooperation between the two countries. The ambassador expected that both sides could initiate cooperation in many areas, including climate change, sanitary, health, vaccine, digitalization and international logistics. “Belgium always advocate multilateralism which can solve global issue. I hope in the future, we can improve the cooperation in China in this term.”
In the end of the interview, the ambassador expressed his expectation to Beijing Winter Olympic Games. He introduced that Belgium would send a sports delegation of relatively large scale and he himself wished to watch the game in the stadium. “Skiing is my favorite sport and I hope I can watch skiing competition in the venue of Beijing Winter Olympic Games!”, said Jan Hoogmartens.