Chapter TenPublic Speeches 公共演讲讲Part I Background Reading习近平在布鲁日欧洲学院的演讲 Your majesties King Philippe and Queen Mathilde, President Herman Van Rompuy, Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo, Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou, Commissioner Maria Damanaki, Governor Carl De Caluwe, Mayor Renaat Landuyt, President Mandasca de Vico, Rector Jorg Monar, diplomatic envoys, faculty members and students, ladies and gentlemen, friends, good morning. It is a great pleasure for me to come to the College of Europe and meet with faculty members and students. First of all, my warm greetings and best wishes to you and all those in Europe who have shown interest in and support to the development of China. In the Flemish language, Bruges means a bridge. A bridge not only makes life more convenient, it could also be a symbol of communication, understanding and friendship. I have come to Europe to build, together with our European friends, a bridge of friendship and cooperation across the Eurasian continent. Before coming here, I visited a Volvo planting Gent together with King Philippe and Queen Mathilde. Volvo Car Gent, the largest car manufacturer in Belgium, has become a model of economic and technological cooperation between China, Belgium and Sweden. it has actually set up a bridge linking Chinese investment with European technology. What it leads to is mutual benefit and win-win cooperation. The College of Europe was created after the end of World War Two, as a result of peoples reflection of the war and their yearning for peace. Human history has far too often been haunted by the spectre of war. Having suffered by the calamity of World War Two, people in Europe began to think over the past misery and started to unite under the leadership of statemen like Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman in the joint pursuit for lasting peace and prosperity. Today, after more than 50 years of development, the College of Europe has not only served as an important think tank for the European Union but also become the cradle of political elites of Europe. In the words of President Van Rompuy, the college has always been at the heart of European integration, as it is in itself an expression of the faith of Europe born out of the ruins of war. Faculty members and students, in 1949 when the College of Europe was established, the Peoples Republic of China was founded, heralding a new historical era in development of the Chinese nation. Later in 1975, late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and Sir Christopher Soames acting on the assessment of the world situation then, decided that China and the European Economic Community should establish diplomatic relations. The day China and the EU have a comprehensive strategic partnership; we have established dialogue and a consultation mechanism in over 60 areas. Our trade last year reached 559.1 billion U.S. dollars. Over 5 million visits are exchanged each year. And about 300,000 of our students are studying overseas, either in Europe, or in China. The relationship between China and EU has become one of the most important bilateral relationships in the world. Having said that we should not forget that theres still great room for the growth of China-EU relations, and the potential is yet to be fully tapped. To move our relationship forward, China needs to know more about Europe, and Europe needs to know more about China. For any country in the world, the past always holds the key to the present, and the present is always rooted in the past. Only when we know where a country has come from, could we possibly understand why the country is what it is today. And only then could we realize to which direction its heading. So let me use this opportunity to describe to you what a country China is. I hope it will be helpful to you as you try to observe, understand and study China. Of course, a thorough account of the country would be too big a topic for today. So as president Van Rompuy said, China and Europe are two big books they can never finish reading. So I will just focus on the following few features of China. First, China has a time honored civilization. Of the worlds ancient civilizations, the Chinese civilization has spanned over 5,000 years and continued uninterrupted to this day. The Chinese characters, invented by our ancestors several millennia ago, are still being used today. Over 2,000 year ago, there was an era of great intellectual accomplishment in China, which is referred to as the period of 100 masters and schools of thought. Great thinkers such as Laotze, Confucius and Motze, to name just a few, explored wide range of topics from the universe to the earth, and from mens relations with nature, to relations amongst human beings, and to that between the individuals and society. The extensive and profound schools of thoughts they established covered many important ideas, such as the moral injuction of fidelity to ones parents and br