On January 23rd, GAO Shanwu, Deputy Secretary of the Qingdao West Coast New Area Working Committee, Director of the Qingdao Free Trade Zone Management Committee, and Director of the Qingdao Sino-German Ecopark Management Committee, met with Christian Sommer, CEO and Chairman of German Centre Shanghai and his team. In the team there were YE Wei, Deputy General Manager; Kerstin Kaehler, General Manager of the German Enterprise Centre Qingdao. ZHANG Yunqing, Deputy Director of the Qingdao Sino-German Ecopark Management Committee, attended the meeting.

Director Gao welcomed the arrival of Mr. Christian Sommer and his team, pointing at Qingdao Free Trade Zone · Sino-German Ecopark to be the forefront of Qingdao's exchanges and cooperation with Germany. Qingdao German Enterprise Centre, established by the German Centre Shanghai, has been playing an important role in carrying out work with Germany in the Ecopark. The park expressed the wish to continue cooperation with German Centre Shanghai and German Enterprise Centre Qingdao in the future, to further expand the influence of the latter in Qingdao German business circle, and to jointly strive for promoting cooperation with Germany and supporting the development of German enterprises in Qingdao and the Ecopark.

Mr. Christian Sommer (Chinese name: XIA Jian'an) firstly expressed his gratitude to the Ecopark for its support for the development and operation of German Enterprise Centre Qingdao. He also appreciated the rapid development of the Ecopark in the past decade. Mr. Sommer believed that Qingdao and Sino-German Ecopark have enjoyed superiority in terms of cooperation with foreign countries. As it is currently more convenient to travel from Germany to China, Sommer mentioned the idea of organizing business, economic, political, cultural and sports delegations to visit Qingdao and Sino-German Ecopark someday, so as to experience the development potential and living environment of the new first-tier city, seeking the opportunity to work together with the Ecopark for increasement in investment confidence of German enterprises, especially the small and medium-sized ones, as well as expecting more possibilities for cooperation in the future.

German Centre Shanghai was settled in Shanghai Tongji University in 1994 and became a subsidiary of the Bavarian State Bank of Germany in 1996, known as Shanghai Deutsche Business Centre Co., Ltd. It plays an important role in local economic exchanges, investment attraction, and other aspects. German Enterprise Centre Qingdao, as a branch of German Centre Shanghai, opened in 2016 and has currently a total of 15,000 ㎡ of office rental space and conference rooms, with amount of tenants up to 41.