Address by the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, at Peking University, Friday, 10 October, 2003
Address by the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, at Peking University, Friday, 10 October, 2003
"Ireland's role in international affairs and expanding relationship with China."
I am very grateful for your warm welcome and I am very pleased to see you all here.
Wo hen gaoxing jiandao nimen.
It is a pleasure to be back in a University setting. I used to be a professor of law and my one previous visit to China was made during my time as Pro-Vice Chancellor of the Queen’s University, Belfast. It is a particular pleasure, and privilege, to be able to talk to students and faculty of this prestigious institution about Ireland’s place in the world, our relations with China, and our approach to international affairs.
For over one hundred years since it was first established as the Imperial University of Peking, this University has occupied a unique place in Chinese life as China’s first comprehensive national university as well as the country’s highest administrative organ for education. Now that historic role continues as your tradition of rigorous academic excellence, your pioneering role in China’s modernization and your mission to go global, position BEIDA to become a world-class university of the 21st century. It is more than a bit daunting to know that students and faculty of Peking University are long accustomed to listening to distinguished scholars and Nobel laureates as well as Heads of State so I hope that this President from the land of Yeats, Joyce, Beckett and Shaw, the land of U2 and the Celtic Tiger, may have something to say that will further provoke your interest in Ireland.
Ireland sits on the very periphery of the continent of Europe, a small island of five and a half million inhabitants. It is a divided island, the Northern part of one and a half million people remains under British rule, the rest forms the independent republic of Ireland and although I am a native of the North, I am privileged and proud to be President of Ireland, president of a country which has in living memory transformed itself from a third world economy into a successful first world economy.
During my term of office as President, Ireland has attracted unprecedented international attention for economic growth rates which for several years well outstripped those of other EU and OECD countries. Mind you, we never achieved the sustained double-digit growth rates that China has known. Our achievement lies in having transformed an inward-looking, peripheral economy which could not support its own people into a first-world economy that is robust, and stable, and even held up as a role model for other small economies. Instead of exporting people as we did for generations, an economically successful and dynamic Ireland now exports its high-tech goods.
Membership of the European Union, which Ireland joined thirty years ago, has been central to reshaping the modern Ireland we know today. The decision of the Irish people to join the European Union was a logical development of a choice made much earlier - the choice, from about 1960 onwards, to open Ireland’s economy to inward investment, foreign trade and competition. The Union gave us the resources, the support and the opportunity to achieve rapid change. Successive Irish governments and the Irish people used them well: from 60% of the European Union average when we joined in 1973, our standard of living has risen to 130% today. Foreign investment, particularly from the United States, has been vitally important to Ireland’s success. 1,200 foreign companies are based in Ireland today. The factors which drew them to us include a favourable corporate tax climate, an entrepreneurial, highly educated and flexible young workforce, a strong social partnership that contributes greatly to social stability, and an English speaking and congenial environment from which to access the European Union market.
The disparities, not least of scale, between the Irish and the Chinese experience of economic “opening up” need no underlining. Yet in the matter of attractiveness to foreign investment at least two of these factors apply for China too: consumer market and workforce. Ireland is a point of entry to a large EU market that is about to become very much larger. China’s already large domestic market is expanding at speed as economic reform lifts more and more millions of people above subsistence level; its full potential is unique in the world. In keeping with the traditional Confucian emphasis on learning, education and research have propelled China’s economic advancement so that, after twenty five years of reform and opening up, her high achievers are a magnet for foreign companies looking for new locations in which to grow their business. Crucially, Chinese people in general have an innate energy and openness to new things, a capacity to adapt quickly and to drive themselves hard for success. The Irish and Chinese are both “can-do” people. A truly heartening aspect of the economic emergence of both of our countries is that our people now have less need to find their wings in far-off places and that some who have prospered abroad are bringing it all back home - and that includes knowledge gained from working in dynamic economies such as you have here in China.
On 1 May next year, it will be Ireland’s privilege, during our Presidency of the European Union, to welcome ten acceding States of Central Europe and the Baltic region into the Union. Enlargement to a Union of 500 million people will have an enormous, positive and far-reaching social, and economic impact on the twenty-five member states. For Ireland, in some respects, it will open up horizons on the scale we saw 30 years ago when we joined ourselves. Competition in trade and investment with lower-cost members will challenge us to find new ways to keep our competitive edge. To sustain our competitiveness, we will have to deal with threats posed by rising costs. More fundamentally, Ireland will be challenged to move from the investment-driven stage of economic development, to the innovation-driven stage. China, which last year overtook Japan as the EU’s 3rd largest trading partner, obviously stands to benefit from the enlargement of the EU market.
Half a dozen of Ireland’s top universities and third level educational institutions are represented on the business mission which accompanies my visit to China - a mission of 84 companies and some 150 participants in total, making it the largest business mission ever to depart Ireland. The IT sector, English language sector, industrial products and engineering sectors are also represented. The mission is the concrete expression of the progress made in the past five years in reinforcing excellent State-to-State relations between Ireland and China with practical, mutually beneficial business and educational links. The concentration of educational links is best demonstrated by the presence of our Minister for Education, Mr. Noel Dempsey T.D., on my State Visit here.
Our experience shows that University-based businesses have a vital role to play in fostering a dynamic knowledge-based economy in Ireland, that will provide sustained growth with more, and better, higher-value jobs in the future. China, too, has embraced the idea of campus-based commercial enterprises, and the development of cooperative links between such entities in Ireland, and similar entities in China is for us an exhilarating prospect. The half dozen universities and third level educational institutions I refer to are well placed to project Ireland in China as a quality destination for high-calibre Chinese students. In this effort, they have the strong backing of the Irish State. I look forward very much to being introduced by them to their Chinese partner institutions, and to hearing about the initiatives they have jointly developed to date, and their hopes for the next stage. I have heard of joint computer science courses culminating in jointly awarded degrees, of structured exchanges of MBA students, and of a programme just launched for joint research collaboration which will encourage the exchange of top level scientists between our two countries. All of this is tremendously positive. I am personally delighted to be able on this visit to encourage all those directly involved on both sides to persevere in this valuable endeavour. It was this very work that first brought me to China some six years ago and I know that we are only still scraping the surface of the full potential of quality cooperation between Ireland and China in the field of education.
I know from my own experience before becoming President of Ireland that joint undertakings between academic institutions, rooted in different cultures, rely heavily on the personal dedication of committed individuals on both sides. Over time, the individuals come to understand and respect each other, to discern what their respective institutions can offer and can gain from working together on a pilot project, to discover the true scope for partnership. I salute the investment that so many Irish universities and colleges are making in building friendship with Chinese partner institutions. We would like to see much more exchange between Chinese and Irish academics and of course we want to nurture and develop the small band of Chinese scholars who devote themselves to the study of Irish writers. Next year will see an Irish Culture Festival in China, and a Chinese Culture Festival in Ireland. As well as showcasing the exuberance of cultural life in each country, these Festivals will go a long way to foster enduring contacts between institutions, academics and artists in Ireland and their counterparts in China. They are very public evidence too of the serious commitment of the Chinese and Irish Governments to active and engaged bilateralism.
Ladies and Gentlemen
Ireland’s increasing bilateral engagement with China is one small measure of the sustained attention which the European Union and all major countries now give to relations with China. The European Union has a major political and economic interest in China’s successful transition to a stable, prosperous and open country. Far from seeing China’s success as a threat, it is actively pursuing a strategy for working more closely with China across a range of regional and global issues of concern.
For China and for the EU, the Asia–Europe Meeting known as ASEM has a special role to play in this context. As an informal forum for dialogue and cooperation between Europe and Asia, ASEM is an excellent setting in which to nurture mutual understanding and cooperation across political, economic, social, educational and cultural issues and so contribute to finding solutions to relevant topics on the international agenda. Ireland is committed to the ASEM process, in which China is playing a major role and indeed we are delighted that Ireland will host the sixth meeting of ASEM Foreign Ministers in Dublin during our EU Presidency next year.
The constructive part China has come to play in multilateral and regional diplomacy reflects its emergence as a strong player on the international stage and its increasing readiness to assume appropriate responsibilities. The first year of the new Millennium will be remembered as the year in which China hosted the APEC Leaders Meeting in Shanghai, finally assumed its rightful place in the international trading system as a member of the WTO, and saw Beijing chosen to host the 2008 Olympic Games. The transition to a new political leadership was barely completed when China took the initiative, earlier this year, to convene first three-party talks, and recently six-party talks to address the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula. The international community including the UN and the European Union are strongly supportive of the larger role China has assumed on this issue seeing in it proof of China’s key role in securing peace and stability in the Asian region.
Ireland has immediate and direct experience of the difficulties of peace-making and of the crucial role played by peace-makers. The northern part of the island has been bedevilled for generations by political and sectarian violence. Thanks to the joint efforts of the British and Irish governments many of the political leaders, and the good hearted people of all persuasions, we now have a peace process which is bringing about considerable political and social change. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 is a binding international agreement between the two governments and its focus is on creating in Northern Ireland a society of equals, a just society where all can have faith in the system of law, and the forces of order, a tolerant society where religion or ethnicity are not barriers to opportunity, a society which resolves its problems through respectful democratic dialogue and not by resort to violence. I am happy to say that considerable progress has been made and the future looks considerably better than the past.
Ireland’s pursuit of peace at home is part of a broader vision for a peaceful and harmonious world which is summarized in our absolute commitment to the United Nations and all its remarkably varied work under the Charter. This commitment is at the core of what Ireland and China share in common in our approach to international relations, and to the challenges facing humanity.
We were extremely gratified to have been elected, with the support of China, to membership of the United Nations Security Council for the term 2001-2002. The Council has been charged by the United Nations Charter with primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. During Ireland’s term on this pre-eminent body, Ireland and China worked very well together, and cooperated throughout in order to ensure the role and functions of the Council. When the world was gravely challenged by the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York, Ireland helped to shape a measured and unified response. Our place in the Council was used throughout our term to champion the role, and to vindicate the principles and purposes of the United Nations. Ireland would not be true to itself if it were to allow the aspirations embedded in the UN Charter to appear redundant, or the high principles of international cooperation to be dismissed as hollow. We strive in all sincerity to promote these principles and values in our international relations, bilateral as well as multilateral.
Recent events have demonstrated that the United Nations remains the indispensable organisation at the centre of our system of collective security, one invested with unique legitimacy and unique authority and one to which people around the world therefore look towards in hope and expectation.
Ireland remains committed to ensuring that the United Nations is, and remains, an organisation worthy of the ideals enshrined in its Charter, worthy of the trust of those who rely on it for help and protection, worthy of the idealism and dedication of those who work for it, and worthy of the sacrifice of those, among whom there are many Irish, who have given their lives in its service.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
My State Visit to China is important to Ireland as a unique opportunity to consolidate the ties of friendship and shared interests forged through accelerated contact in the period since the Irish Taoiseach Mr. Bertie Ahern T.D., made an official visit to China, in September 1998. For me personally, it is the fulfilment also of a strong wish to return to your country, which I have harboured ever since I visited Shenzhen six years ago. I should like, if I may, to bring this part of my meeting with you to a close by sharing some of my impressions at this early stage of my visit.
Martin and I have been received most graciously by the Chinese leadership and afforded every courtesy. I have had most interesting discussions with President Hu Jintao with Premier Wen Jiabao and with NPC Chairman Wu Bangguo and have gained an understanding of how they approach the challenges facing China and its people. I have met the resident Irish community in Beijing as well as the Chinese partners of the Irish businessmen who, as I said, have come on the business mission accompanying my State Visit. I have seen some undisputed wonders of the world - the Great Wall of China and Beijing’s Forbidden City. I have been greatly impressed by the visible economic and social progress that China has made in the few short years since I was here before. Even more striking, and tremendously heartening, is the vibrant confidence in their own future and the future of China that I sense in everybody I talk to. I shall take back with me to Ireland the impression of a dynamic and confident nation, one which has already made immense strides in its economic development and is also committed to social progress, a nation which is already playing an important part on the regional and world stages, and one which stands poised to make an even greater contribution in the future. Many things have changed in six years but one thing that has not changed is the warmth and generosity of the Chinese welcome. I hope it is something more and more Irish people will experience as Ireland and China grow in friendship and economic partnership.
Thank you very much.
Feichang Ganxie.