(26 August 2011, Shilaj, Ahmedabad, Gujarat)

Dear students and the faculty,

Ladies and Gentlemen

Good afternoon!

It's a great pleasure for me to participate in this event to launch the China-India Green Initiative. I would like to thank Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and India-China Economic and Cultural Council for their efforts to organize this meaningful event. My thanks also go to Huawei Telecommunication India and ZTE Telecom India, two Chinese telecom companies in India and ADANI Company of India for supporting the project.

Dear Students. Today, the world is facing with mounting challenges posed by the global warming and environmental degradation. The international communities are joining their efforts by taking various kinds of measures to meet the challenges. As we all know, apart from reducing green house emission, reforestation is also an effective way to mitigate the green house effect. Trees can play an important role in protecting eco-system by absorbing carbon dioxide and cleaning the air. Therefore, your noble initiative today is very significant and timely, by which you are in fact doing concrete contribution to the protection of our planet and making it greener and more livable to human being. I am told that each of you will plant and adopt two trees. The trees will be named after you. New technology, such as Radio Frequency Identification, will also be used to monitor the growth of the plants through your computer or cell phone at a distant place, helping you take better care of the trees. I am sure under you meticulous care these trees will flourish day by day.

China like India attaches great importance to the protection of environment and committed to contribute her share to mitigate the trend of the global warming. In China, we have set aside a special day as Tree Planting Day and have carried out comprehensive cooperation with India and other countries on climate change issues. At the same time, new and environmentally friendly technologies are employed to produce green and clean energy.

Dear students. In China, there is an old proverb saying that "it takes ten years to grow a tree, but a hundred years to bring up a generation of people". Both China and India have a big percentage of young population. You are the future of our two countries. In recent years, both countries have carried out many cooperative projects in the fields of education and culture. Student exchange programs, Chinese and Hindi language teaching and intercollegiate partnership are going on actively, producing positive result. In recent years, already 490 Indian students have received Chinese Government scholarships and studied various disciplines in China. Currently more than 9000 Indian students are studying in China and over 2000 Chinese students in India. In view of our two big populations, the figures are too small. There are still abundant opportunities for us to expand cooperation in educational field, especially in higher education. 2011 has been designated as the Year of China-India Exchange by leaders of two countries. I earnestly hope that two countries can make new headway in educational, cultural and people-to-people exchanges.

Dear students,

With the care and joint efforts of leaders and people of two countries, China-India relations are developing in an all around manner. Strategic Cooperative Partnership between China-India is gaining momentum and mutual political trust has been enhanced. Economically, China and India are already major trading partners to each other. In the international arena, both countries share similar interests and positions on many issues and are playing an increasing significant role. We are of the view that China-India relations have gone beyond the bilateral context and acquired the strategic and global dimension. China and India are partners for peace and development. Let's join our hands to work for a better future for our two countries and two peoples as well as to the whole world as well.

Finally, I sincerely wish the friendship and cooperation between China and India will grow like trees stronger and stronger day by day!

Thank you.