Around 450 high-level political and business executives from around the world gathered Thursday in Hamburg for the first "Hamburg Summit", putting the focus on China's surging economic and trade relations with Europe. Former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt was due to give the inaugural speech Thursday evening to start the "China Meets Europe" conference running through Saturday. The parley is to examine such questions as China's role in world politics and the global economy, take a look at some of the new Chinese leaders, and look at developments in such industries as energy, automobiles, consumer products and private sector investment. Leading a blue-ribbon list of Chinese participants to the conference is Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan. Other guests from China are to include Minsheng Bank founder Liu Yong-hao, Cosco Group president Capt. Wei Jiafu, China Economic Cooperation Center president Cao Baijun, and Yan Lan, chairwoman of the leading private media group Sun Media Investment Holdings. The list of participants also includes such notables as former Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew, Nobel Prize laureate Robert Mundell, Hamburg First Mayor Ole von Beust, German Interior Minister Otto Schily, and Klaus Ebermann, head of the E.U. Delegation to China. Among the European business executives present will be Marcus Wallenberg, president of the Swedish firm Investor AB, Andreas Kreimeyer, the BASF board member for Asia, and Peter Cornelius, chief economist of Royal Dutch/Shell. "No other China-Europe conference has brought so many top-level Chinese officials to Europe, no other has convened so many outstanding speakers," said Nikolaus W. Schues, a Hamburg shipping company owner and former president of the Chamber of Commerce. "This summit will be a benchmark for any other China-oriented conference," he predicted. --more 1257 Local Time 0957 GMT
