"Continuity is the hallmark of our cooperation with China," said Prof. Dr. Hans Zehetmair, Chairman of the Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSF), during the renewal of the cooperation agreement with the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) in Munich on May 22nd, 2012. CPAFFC-President and co-signatory of the agreement Li Xiaolin agreed that both sides have built a solid foundation for future cooperation.

The Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries became the first partner organization of the Hanns Seidel Foundation when official relations were established in 1979. The cooperation has since focused on furthering the political dialogue on current socio-political, economic and cultural issues as well as supporting gifted students in the less developed regions of western China through a scholarship program.

In Munich the HSF and the CPAFFC jointly hosted a panel discussion on „The European Sovereign Debt and Banking Crisis: Recent Developments and Political Consequences“. (For more information on this event please refer to our German or Chinese articles.) As Li Xiaolin noted at the end of the event, this form of academic engagement between two countries also reflects the rising awareness of the mutual dependence and shared responsibilities that shape today’s world.

In the course of her visit to Germany, Li Xiaolin also attended a series of meetings. In Munich she exchanged views with Reinhold Bocklet, Vice President of the Bavarian State Parliament, and both discussed the close ties between Bavaria and China, in particular the German states’ regional partnership with the provinces Shandong and Guangdong. In Berlin, Li Xiaolin met Eduard Oswald, Vice-President of the German Federal Parliament as well as Hartmut Koschyk, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministey of Finance. Both talks focused on the Eurozone crisis and possible solutions as well as Sino-German cooperation and relations between the EU and China.