Meeting for China-Sweden green cooperation

Chinese Ambassador to Sweden, Chen Yuming, addresses this year's China-Sweden Green Cooperation Conference. [Photo: China Plus/Chen Xuefei]

This year's China-Sweden Green Cooperation Conference has come to an end.

The 3-day event has been held two years after the inaugural session in Sweden.

Some 260 people from China and Sweden have taken part in this year's Conference, touring waste and water treatment facilities as part of Sweden's eco-city program.

Chinese Ambassador to Sweden, Chen Yuming, says the Green Cooperation initiative provides a valuable experience for everyone involved.

"This conference is important for bilateral relations, for bilateral collaboration between business people from two countries and for companies from two countries. It will be an important event to promote further bilateral collaboration between China and Sweden towards new partnership and towards new economy."

Sweden's Minister for Enterprise and Innovation, Mikael Damberg, says they hope to make Sweden a development model for the rest of the world.

"We need business partners in the private society, collaboration between Swedish companies and Chinese companies but we also need to scale up the potential because if we really want to challenge societal challenges, and face them all, it is not enough to deal with it with 10 million people in Sweden, we have to do it in a bigger scale."

Damberg says China is primed to become even more involved in Sweden's social and economic growth, noting the ties that already exist, such as Geely's purchase of Volvo a few years ago.

Green Cooperation Conference organizer Elizabeth Soderberg suggests Swedish interest in China is also on the rise.

"We have 260 people, half of them from China or Chinese companies, half from Sweden. So that is more than double we had the first time we arranged the conference."

The conference itself is a combined effort involving the Chinese Embassy in Sweden, the Sweden-China Trade Council, the Sweden-China Greentech Alliance and the Swedish Environment Institute IVL.

IVL Vice Chair Osten Ekengren says the Conference, aside from providing insight into environmental advances, is also a good opportunity for business leaders to share ideas.

"We saw more and more cooperation with China, so we want to establish conference so we can share experiences, and also more and more developed solutions together, so we have chosen three areas from both sides and many Swedish companies from Sweden-China Trade Council so it is a good opportunity to meet Chinese companies and decision makers."

Corporations such as Ericsson, Huawei and the Bank of China have also lent their support to the 3-day conference, which has included tours of some of Sweden's most advanced waste and water treatment facilities.