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“Lithuania: a Hub in a Centre of Europe”

Excellencies,
Professors,
Dear students,

I am extremely excited to speak to you here about Lithuania. I would like to start with the fact that Lithuanian language is taught at your university since last year – the only university in China with the Lithuanian language course.

It is a worldwide known fact for the linguists that Lithuanian language retained many ancient Indo–European forms and is the most similar language to the Sanskrit, the old language of India. Scientists of historical-comparative linguistics of Indo-European languages confirmed that Lithuanian retained archaic sounds, morphology, shifting stress. Therefore prominent linguists visit Lithuania in order to learn our language and Vilnius has become the world centre for the Baltic studies. I hope in this room, among you, are students studying Lithuanian language - they could confirm that Lithuanian is a very difficult language to learn, just like Chinese to us. Nevertheless, despite difficulties, many Lithuanians take up Chinese courses which are more and more popular in Lithuania.

I hope that you do know where Lithuania is situated, but you may not know that French National Geographic Institute in 1989 determined the geographical centre of continental Europe and it is in Lithuania, near our capital Vilnius (26 kilometers north). This speaks well for our strategic position in Europe – on the crossroads of east and west, north and south. Even though we place ourselves firmly in the European family of countries and cultures, we have unique experience of places to the east and south from us: Russia, Ukraine, Caucasus countries. There are many historical reasons to this – glorious but also tragic past.

Lithuania has just celebrated one thousand years of the official mentioning of its name in the historical chronicles. This date symbolizes our nation’s status - rising to the European political scene and the development of our statehood.   Even though as a state we are younger than you by a couple of thousands of years, we too are an old country with the real sense of history.

Perhaps not all of you know that Lithuania was once the largest state in Europe. By the end of the 14th century Lithuania occupied vast territories of nowadays Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, but the centre of a huge Grand Duchy of Lithuania was always present Lithuania.

Then for two hundred years Lithuania was in Commonwealth with Poland, which was eventually divided by the great European powers and fell under Russian empire in the end of the 18th century.

In 1918 we regained our statehood but in 1939 and in 1940 again Lithuania was occupied by the Soviets, then, in 1941 by the Nazis, and again in 1945 – by the Soviets. Lithuania – a country of 3 million – lost 1/3 of its population because of the mentioned occupations.

But even being under the Soviet occupation Lithuanians managed to resist and fight for their freedom. Lithuania regained its independence in 1990 after 50 years of occupation. In 1991 we established (or in a number of cases reestablished) diplomatic relations with the major part of the world. We are very glad that this year we can mark the 20th anniversary of our diplomatic relations with your country, China.

The first Lithuanian foreign policy priority then was to return to the European family and back to the International forum as an active member of UN, WTO, NATO, etc. We have also worked hard to strengthen regional cooperation with our Nordic Baltic neighbors who were our major supporters.  We share with them strong sense of Nordic - Baltic identity. 

From being recipient of aid Lithuania has moved fast to a donor country – as a nation of 3 million we really do a lot. We are in Afghanistan, helping to rebuild Ghor - one of the most isolated and impoverished provinces. Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, and Central Asia – we help others to achieve what we have achieved already. (In 2010 Lithuania‘s oficial development assistance (ODA) constituted to 0,1% of gross national income (GNI). In the period of 2006-2010 we realized 132 projects valued almost 4 mln. Euros).

We are active in the fight against terrorism, together with China we are engaged in the anti-piracy activities.

I am especially proud about our partnership with China in ASEM (Asia- Europe Meeting) where Lithuania was the first to start ASEM dialogue on Transport – and China became our main partner in this endeavor.

In 2011 Lithuania became a chairman of OSCE – Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe. And it’ a challenging experience for us. With 56 States from Europe, Central Asia and North America, the OSCE is the world's largest regional security organization which works in the fields of early warning, conflict prevention, crisis management and post-conflict rehabilitation.

As a chairman in office I have travelled to New York, Washington, Moscow, Brussels and many other capitals of the world. Even if China is not associated to OSCE, I would like to stress that there are many areas of common concern for both China and OSCE, especially frozen conflicts, terrorism and international criminal activities including the trafficking of people, weapons, and drugs, energy security, and cyber-security. As Chair I devote a great deal of time and energy on the protracted conflicts in Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh and in the South Caucuses.

The OSCE can offer practical experience in institution building and managing electoral processes. OSCE also advocates human rights security – personal, media, institutional, civil society freedom – to which we are greatly attached.

I would like to tell some words to you also about economy and business. We are part of the huge market of the EU.

Although Lithuania suffered from the global recession quite hard, we appeared to be one of the first to fight it and quickly jumped onto the same track we were before the crisis started – Lithuania’s economy started growing again already in 2009 and the market is very much inspired by highly optimistic international analysts’ evaluations and future development forecasts. The World Bank projects that in 2011 Lithuania will top the EU10 economies with a forecasted GDP growth of 4.3 %.

Lithuania is not rich in natural recourses; therefore the engine of our economy is people. We have one of the most educated populations in EU: 40 percent of Lithuanians have university level education, 90 percent are able to speak at least one foreign language. 40 percent of Lithuanian researchers are concentrated in science and technology, majority of them are below 45 years old. Lithuania has a “talent pool” of 18 thousands scientists in various research and development fields. 

Talking further about Lithuania’s priorities, number one is cooperation with our neighbours in the North. Lithuania together with Latvia, Estonia, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Denmark forms a Nordic-Baltic region: which distinguishes by the constantly increasing level of economic integration and by the ambition to advance as one entity.

We are aiming this region to become an integrated community of values and quality in daily life. We even have a family kind of organization - NB8 which is very effective, open and flexible.

Another great asset of our region is well developed infrastructure and transport connections by air, land and sea. For example, there are more than 600 flights and sea trips from Baltic countries to Nordic countries every week. The connections are constantly increasing and there is a great business potential. Our Nordic-Baltic region is market of 35 million people, which equals to almost 10 % of Europe’s GDP.

Lithuania aims to develop a modern, dynamic and prosperous economy. We have ambition and political will: within the next 20 years to become one of the most innovative countries in a broad Nordic-Baltic region.

We are obviously on the right track towards these major market development goals. We understand that to make this vision come true a lot of hard work must be done. We are determined to work hard on attracting investments by implementing innovations and training high profile specialists in our universities.   

Taking this opportunity, I invite you, Chinese students, to turn more towards non-traditional study destinations and choose Lithuania for your studies - Lithuania is European country and the qualification of our Universities is recognized throughout European Union and therefore throughout the world.

Also I would like to point out that we have world’s leading ICT (Information and communications technologies) infrastructure and an impressive list of significant European and global records in this field:

• Lithuania has world’s 2nd speediest upload Internet,
• Europe‘s No. 1 fiber broadband penetration;
• the world’s No. 1 in the number of mobile telephone subscribers per 100 persons;
• Lithuania was the first country in the whole EU as well as one of the first in the world to launch the 4G Mobile Internet back in 2009.
• Lithuanian company will produce optical components for the satellite of European Space Agency.
• Lithuanian manufacturer of lasers won the world’s best Scientific Laser award in 2010 after successful competition with 16 other finalists from General Electrics and other global leaders of the industry. 

So, here we see business opportunities in development of services, high-tech, as well as innovative and cauterized traditional industries. It is expected that by 2015 production of IT, laser technologies, biotechnologies, nanotechnologies and materials science will constitute 25 % of Lithuania‘s GDP and 80 % of national export.

Today we have already some successful examples of cooperation with China in the field of high-technologies. Lithuanian lasers have already found their place in Chinese market. We have the continuing dialog with Huawei Company regarding investments and cooperation in developing concrete projects in the field of innovation technologies in Lithuania. Just before my arrival to Beijing Vilnius University, Huawei and leading Lithuanian telecommunication company Omnitel have signed an agreement regarding the establishment of joint science laboratory in Vilnius University.

Also we have good cooperation in the field of transport. Lithuanian and Chinese Minister‘s of Transport were leading ASEM transport ministerial meeting in 2009 in Vilnius. The aim of this formation is to connect Asia and Europe by better transport links. The work is going on and the second ministerial will be held this year in China.

Now let’s talk about culture for a minute.

Confucius Institute has been opened in Lithuania last year; Chinese language and culture become increasingly popular. Lithuania also has the Centre of Oriental studies, which is the major institution of Asia studies. The present centre of Oriental Studies has functioned since 1993; however, its original foundation date goes back to 19th century, when Vilnius University was the heart of studies of Oriental languages in Lithuania. The Centre of Oriental studies enjoys great support from your Government, from the Chinese Embassy in Lithuania and we are grateful for it.

But I also heard that Lithuanian art has found its way into China – we have good theatre, music and literary tradition too. One of our poets – Tomas Venclova has just received an important literary prize in China – Golden Tibetan Antelope Award.

I started from stressing the importance of learning each other’s languages – I will finish by saying that still there are areas where knowledge of language is not essential. A sport is one of them – and we have a lot in common with you in sports. And a lot to share – we shared with you our major basketball trainer – Jonas Kazlauskas – whom you know well.

We have played basketball with your national team in Beijing Olympics. Do come to Lithuania to have another match. Do come as basketball fans – we are hosting European Basketball Championship this September. We have not only excellent basketball trainers, but also great training facilities and beautiful environment.

Chinese students have already discovered Lithuanian Universities, but we have much more to offer and to share. 

Dear students, professors,

Once again I would like to address you and invite for a wider cooperation between our Universities, researchers and, please, come and visit us.

They say: it is better to see something once than to hear a hundred times.

Thank you so much for your attention. All your questions are very welcome.