30 Years Partnership Bavaria - Shandong

From Bill Holler

Three board members of the OstWestWirtschaftsForum Bayern were present at the historic event in Jinan, the capital of the Chinese province of Shandong, when the 30-year partnership between Bavaria and Shandong (99 million inhabitants) was celebrated.

Prime Minister Horst Seehofer was accompanied by State Parliament President Barbara Stamm and his colleague, State Secretary Franz-Josef Pschierer.

Denkendorfer Blasmusik was led by Christian Holtz, member of the board of directors of OWWF. This was a welcome Bavarian music highlight in the Middle Kingdom. For Christian Holtz, however, it was a very special memory because he was already in China in 1985, at that time accompanied by Franz-Josef Strauß on his first historically important trip to China.

Prime Minister Seehofer and Shandong's governor Gong Zheng praised the achievements of this partnership. These were presented in time lapse through a superbly made film and not only astonished the Chinese hosts.

From my own experience I can only confirm that this partnership has now become friendship, as Seehofer stated, after having worked in Jinan for many years in a well-connected network.

We were also able to help with this very specifically in an important Bavarian-Chinese business initiation. A medium-sized company from Bavaria, which belongs to the TOP 50 companies and is the No. 1 company in its sector in terms of technology, was represented at this reception by the owner and managing director at my invitation. After concrete talks with AVIC (aerospace industry) the day before, there was a direct meeting with Seehofer and a reunion with Franz-Josef Pschierer.

After concretely contemplating the creation of a company in Jinan, it was particularly fitting that the two entrepreneurs succeeded in placing both the chairman and director of Jinan Investmentbank as a table neighbor.

Perhaps this would have been almost impossible for us. In China, it was possible to invite the two bank representatives to a reception at short notice on the late evening before and to send out the invitations shortly before midnight. The fact that the seating arrangements of the approx. 400 guests had to be changed at the last minute was still relatively harmless and relaxed by Chinese standards.

As a Neumarkter, I was of course delighted to meet Johann Bögl, entrepreneur from Neumarkt (Max Bögl GmbH), whose company built the lines of the most modern high-speed train between Beijing and Shanghai.