Czech ambassador: Sino-Czech co-op focuses on trade, environment

By Mike Peters (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-11-18 19:57

Ambassador Libor Secka, recently named the new ambassador of the Czech Republic to China, sat down with China Daily's Mike Peters for an exclusive interview to talk about education, trade, the EU and the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, which his country celebrated this week.

You arrived in Beijing as the new ambassador about a month ago. Did you ask for this posting?

In my country as in many countries, it is the decision of the government. But if you have some experience in this you can express your desire, and at the appropriate time I did this. So I was pleased when this was decided.

You have quite a reputation as a linguist, speaking five languages in addition to Czech. Will you try to learn Mandarin while you are here?

Well, the languages that I know are the languages of Europe, so they are similar. Here, I got the recommendation to concentrate on the basics of colloquial language. To become fluent and to maintain it you need six years, and our missions are generally limited to four or five years. So I am concentrating on being able to speak a little to people on the streets, but focusing on the work of our mission. I do think it’s important to get some knowledge to speak some. People are very communicative here, and they have a sense of humor about it.

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You recently had a meeting with students at Beijing University. Can you talk a little about that?

We met with about 16 Chinese students who are in their first year of academic work and started learning Czech in September. After a month they are able to introduce themselves and say some phrases. We organized a small concert with the famous singer Edita Randova, who we had here for our National Day celebration on Oct 28, and it was all very good. So we have agreed to provide support for them from the embassy as much as we can. We will try to stimulate them – to learn the Czech language you need to be able to concentrate.

What is the ambition of those Chinese students who are learning Czech?

They are hoping to continue their studies at a Czech University. In Prague we have a number of Chinese students studying at our universities. Also, Czech enterprises doing business here want to use Chinese workers with knowledge of Czech, and there is always need for interpreters. So we hope to increase this in the future. Another possibility: There is a Czech section for Chinese radio.

What about Czech people in China?

In terms of students, we know about 20 or so, and there are more who have gotten scholarships on their own who have not contacted the embassy. At any time there are about 60 Czech citizens in Shanghai and about the same number in Beijing: students, business people and embassy staff. For all of them we will have a Christmas concert – that is a big tradition for us.

Can you talk about trade projects of special interest?

There is a long tradition of Czechoslovak-China industrial relations. We provided in the past trucks, power plants, and then traditional articles such as crystal and beer. And from China we mainly imported foods and consumer products. Now the picture has changed some: We are exporting cars and we are producing a lot of those cars here (in Shanghai) in a joint venture between our Chinese partner and our brand Skoda. If you take the first 10 months of this year, the global sales of Skoda are around 540,000 – and 95,000 of that is the Chinese market. So you can see how important that is: Our media said that the China market saved Skoda this year. We are working to make Skoda more visible and famous in China. (Skoda China president Alfred Rieck announced on Nov 12 that Skoda had sold its 100,000th car for the year, setting a growth record for China in the partnership’s third year of operation.)

Other export items include steam turbines, engines, generators, electric equipment, textile machinery. And from China: data processing equipment, telecommunications equipment, TV and radio accessories, integrated circuits, and consumer goods such as shoes and toys.

We have also spoken about environmental equipment for purification of water and air – we would like to do more of this with Chinese companies – and we participated in a very nice seminar about ‘green’ coal to make this industry a more ecological production. In our country we also have a lot of recent experience in reforestation and fighting against floods – for that we have developed a system from early warning to protective barriers -- and our entrepreneurs are very eager to share this with Chinese partners. At the coming Expo 2010 in Shanghai, we will have two pavilions, one for the Czech Republic and the other for the capital city of Prague: slogan will be “The City’s Fight against Floods”, and we will showcase this technology there. For the past year we have a $13 billion volume of trade, $12 billion in Chinese exports and $1 billion in Czech exports. We are realistic and will try to improve this proportion, but for the time being the surplus will be on the China side.

China is a difficult market for foreign business, but a very important one. The Chinese market is a sort of proof, a test of your level: If you can do business in the Chinese market, you can do business anywhere.

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