Dear Mr. Zhao Qizheng, dear Mr. Han Fangming, Mr. Lyu Fengding, Mr. Feng Guo qin, Mr. Zhou Han min and last but not the least, Mr. Ke Yinbin, ladies and gentlemen, 

Good afternoon! 

The Institute for International Cultural Relations, we call it shortly for IFA, is an old cultural organization in Germany for almost 100 years. It has worked in the areas of world foreign cultural and educational policy. We engaged in theoretical and practical projects and the current example being the review process 2014 initiated by German Foreign Minister, which aims to discover the parameters of German foreign politics together with the country's civil society. This process would not have been initiated if it variant for the potential perceived. The IFA, as the center of competence for cultural and foreign politics is currently debating how diplomacy, the art of international collaboration needs to organize and to change in the light of new circumstances. At new circumstances we recognized the increasing transfer of communication and cooperation models for foreign relation to regions, to cities and to civil societies. As more and more players participated in foreign politics and I involved in state action both directly and indirectly. The digitalization which has changed our world of values and our image of man in the radical way comparable to the introduction of the letter press and the steam engine in Europe identified and why it forms of communication increasing global mobility a cosmopolitan inter-relations make ask which role public diplomacy needs to play today, and how it can be put in practice. With regard to the city as a political actor, the US economist Richard Florida developed this is after three “T”s, that advanced city and region in creative economic terms or have been the main pre condition for already visible economic success and these three “T”s are technology, talent and tolerance. And technology means innovations usually come from small start-ups, rather than larger firms. And talent means if good infrastructure to education and research institutions exists, young and clever minds would be attracted, but it's all above. All the regions and cities' tolerance that attracts creative professionals and make them stay, creativity may be our most important currency nowadays. It requires much more sociable openness, support and solves at the best instrument to ensure the city's success. I'm sure the questions of the three parties would come up in our discussions during today and tomorrow in this conference on the meaning of cities. We need to find means of cooperation between government and civil society action, and we need to consider which new forms and formats his comments city project has n which understanding of dialogue cooperation and interconnectedness we need to develop with regard to city politics and which consequences this will have. I look forward to our discussions in the next few days, and I am convinced that results and insight of our conference in Beijing 2005, the Hague in 2013, and this year here in Shanghai, next year in Berlin will contribute to the Chinese-European Dialogue on the different levels of public policy, whether it is under the respect of cultural diplomacy or city diplomacy or other perspectives on diplomacy. 

Thank you very much!