Last Stop Shanghai

We pretty much reached the end of the Economic Mission to China. As mentioned before, the last leg led the Luxembourgish delegation, that includes the Hereditary Grand Duke, to Shanghai where they were busy as always.

You might remember that both Henri and Guillaume have visited the World Expo in Shanghai last year but what to do with a pavilion after the Expo has finished?! Initially it was planned to deconstruct the Luxembourg pavilion to re-erect it in front of two new steelmills of Hunan Valin, a steel producer co-owned by the Luxembourg based ArcelorMittal, who are the largest steel producers in the whole world. I don't know why this plan was abandoned, but earlier this year it was decided that the pavilion would just stay where it is. It is obviously the easiest and the cheapest thing to do, but you can only leave your pavilion if there is someone you can gift it to and Luxembourg has found this someone.

The pavilion is one of six that will stay where they are to host a European-Chinese exchange center for cultural and trading purposes, specifically it will be home to an art exhibition. In his speech the Hereditary Grand Duke stated that the pavilion should be seen as "a gift from the people of Luxembourg to the people of China". The donation agreement was signed by Jeannot Krecké and Dai Jian Min.

Additionally, Guillaume and the rest the delegation also visited the 'Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation – Volkswagen Joint Venture and Parts Production' where they toured the facilities.


Sources: Cour Grand-Ducale, Wort, Tageblatt