Diplomatic Pouch

Irine Gina-Reichl, ambassador of Austria?and Dong Yi, CEO of Beautiful Asset Art Industry Corporation and the sponsor of CYAP. Photo by Rebecca Lin / Sino-US.com Irine Gina-Reichl

Austria hosts promising Chinese artists

Austrian Ambassador Irine Gina-Reichl hosted a reception and exhibition for the China Young Artists Project, a non-profit program that aims to promote young talent to the world on Thursday night. The Art Bridges Cultures show features 42 contemporary art works by 22 artists; it remains on display until Nov 30.

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The Beijing Hungarian Cultural Institute was officially opened by Peter Szijjarto, state secretary for foreign affairs and external economic relations, in a ceremony at Galaxy Soho. Afterward, Szijjarto joined Hungarian Ambassador Sandor Kusai to host a cocktail reception, fashion show and the premiere of a Sino-Hungarian co-produced film.

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Cambodia's Ambassador to China Khek M. Caimealy hosted a reception for her country's 60th anniversary of independence on Monday at Beijing's Legendale Hotel.

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The Belgian embassy celebrated King's Day by supporting the premiere of a dance performance, a collaboration between Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Chinese dancer Wang Yabin, on Thursday at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing.

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The Australian embassy announced that the nominees for the 7th Asia Pacific Screen Awards include two Chinese film luminaries. Zhang Ziyi was nominated for best actress in The Grandmaster, and Lu Yue was nominated for best cinematography in Back to 1942, Thirty-nine films from 21 Asia Pacific countries and areas will vie for the region's highest accolade in film, with the winners announced at a glittering ceremony in Brisbane on Dec 12.

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"We go everywhere in China with it," US Ambassador Gary Locke told Politico bloggers last week at the Select USA Investment Summit in Washington. "It" is a prized video, funded by Locke himself, that features testimonials from top officials at Chinese companies Tianjin Pipe, a seamless steel pipe manufacturer, and Wanxiang America, an auto-parts manufacturer, which have already put down roots in America. The video can be seen on the US embassy in Beijing's website. Locke said total Chinese investment in the United States grew from zero in 2000 to about $21 billion in 2011. Since then, $20 billion more has rolled in, including Chinese company Shuanghui International's $7.1 billion purchase of Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, the world's biggest pork producer. Locke launched the Select USA program to attract foreign direct investment when he was US secretary of commerce.

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Nicolai Prytz is Denmark's new consul-general in Shanghai, one of the fastest-growing financial zones in the world. More than 200 Danish companies are currently active in the Shanghai-Suzhou region, including Maersk, Bestseller, Kopenhagen Fur, Carlsberg, Grundfos and Danfoss.

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The Swiss embassy last week sponsored a public lecture on the Human Brain Project, a European Flagship Project with total funding of more than 1 billion euros. The goal is to pull together all our existing knowledge about the human brain and to reconstruct the brain, piece by piece, in supercomputer-based models and simulations. Speaker Dr. Sean Hill, professor at the Brain Mind Institute of the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, is one of the principal investigators and the leader of the neuroinformatics platform of the project.