“First of all, I would like to thank our co-organisers, the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry, for their support. We have organised this event for three consecutive years. There are some very important witnesses and some heavyweights with us today. For example, [Minister-Counsellor (Commercial) at the Chinese Embassy to France] Ms. Gao Yuanyuan has always participated in our forum. And Professor Cédric Villani, who is said to be the spokesman for artificial intelligence in France is with us this year. Of course, the forum has also received support from commercial enterprises, and President of Paris Région Entreprises Mr. Frank Margain will speak in a while.

France is a very important place for us. Many of us in Shanghai and Beijing have come to this event as a way to show Europe’s importance to us. As we all know, CEIBS was jointly established by the EU and the Shanghai Municipal Government 24 years ago. This is a particularly bold, and important project of the EU in China.

Since its inception, the China Europe International Business School has achieved many [impressive] results. On Monday, [our Global Executive MBA programme] rose by 9 spots in the new worldwide rankings, becoming the fifth-ranked in the world, with the top four being [collaborations between two or more schools]. CEIBS ranks first in the world among independent EMBA programmes, and we are very proud of the high results in academia. CEIBS ranks eighth in the world in the full-time MBA rankings. We are the only school in Asia among the top ten and we are very proud. This is the result of the positive support of the Chinese government and the EU. In the past year, many important international politicians, including French politicians, have come to CEIBS to teach, including former Prime Ministers of France Jean-Pierre Raffarin, Dominique de Villepin, and former Director General of the WTO Mr. Pascal Lamy who will lecture at CEIBS later in the year. We are very happy to see so many friends here today, and I want to extend a warm welcome to you. I hope that during this forum, everyone will benefit from the presentations and participate in very positive discussions.

In conclusion, I hope that this forum will achieve fruitful results, thank you!”