Building bridges

HE Paul Steinmetz, Luxembourg Ambassador to China since 2013, give an insight into his thoughts about more than 40 years of bilateral relations between the Middle Kingdom and the Grand Duchy.
You arrived in Beijing last year. What are your priorities as Luxembourg Ambassador To China?
My aim is to continue the good work of my predecessors and to keep Luxembourg on the map. We need to have more trade in goods and also keep up the good momentum in services. I would like to have more students from Luxembourg enroll in Chinese universities and more tourists from China sightseeing in the Grand Duchy.
How can Luxembourg further develop potential business opportunities?
Setting up a trade and investment office and consulate in Shanghai was a wise decision. Ideally we should have more offices in other cities. China is a vast country. In the meantime, working with local contacts, we can use our Ministers’ visits to go beyond first tier cities. We now see private companies from China from the non-financial sector also setting up offices in Luxembourg. Like banks, they use our country as a gateway to the EU single market. For me, this is one of the most significant developments. I expect this to give some necessary impetus to our foreign trade. Conversely, I see much interest from some sectors in Luxembourg, like food & beverage. We do our very best to help them.
How is the Luxembourg financial centre perceived in China?
We now host all the major Chinese banks, or are about to do so. I’ve been told many times by the bankers themselves and by authorities here in Beijing that they fully recognize and value our role in helping Chinese banks to set up in Europe. We are confident they will develop further.
Are you satisfied with the bilateral relations between Luxembourg and China? How do you see them develop further?
We had two ministerial visits already with two more to follow this year. The Crown Prince is a regular leader of our business delegations. At senior officials’ level, our political dialogue will be upgraded. We also look forward to holding consultations at the highest level: we are working on that. The large amount of Luxembourg citizens are our local ambassadors. I try to meet as many as possible and ask them for advise on how to develop relations.
You have accumulated a lot of experience in Asia. What fascinates you about your work in China?
Our job is to be helpful. Working in China can be a challenge: the size and variety of the country and the large number of commentators and analysts create an avalanche of information. We therefore analyse and synthetise the flux of information, for the benefit of the decision makers in Luxembourg.   Lynn Robbroeckx
Luxembourg for Finance newsletter, Special Asia Magazine – June/July 2014