Icelandic President Halla Tomasdottir on Tuesday praised China's important contributions to the global women's cause and voiced her willingness to strengthen her nation’s cooperation with China.
During an interview with China Media Group (CMG) following her attendance at the Global Leaders' Meeting on Women in Beijing, Tomasdottir acknowledged Chinese President Xi Jinping's commitments to gender equality, while emphasizing that China's voice on gender equality is significant on a global scale.
"I'm so honored to be invited to be here 30 years after the world's first female president was elected in my country and came here towards the end of her tenure. Thirty years later, I am here as the second female president of my country, Iceland. Yesterday, we had 110 or 120 countries present. We had your president, Xi Jinping, putting out not just a bold statement but bold commitments to gender equality. And I think in a world where we are facing backlash on an agenda that I think is incredibly important for the development of the world, both economically and socially, and I have high hopes that China is with the commitments that your president made yesterday. China is a big country, your voice and what you do and what you put on the agenda really matters to the rest of us," Tomasdottir said.
Tomasdottir described her Tuesday meeting with Xi as positive. She noted that they had exchanged views on important bilateral issues and engaged in discussions on major global challenges.
"We spoke mostly about geothermal and how we have trained for a long time in Iceland, for nearly four decades, Chinese engineers and geothermal capacity and how there is now a joint venture between China and Arctic Green, an Icelandic company, that is really looking to utilize geothermal, already doing it in 70 cities in China, but has the potential to do so much more. But also, I think together Iceland and China can tell a story about how a smaller country and a bigger country can work together using each other's strength," Tomasdottir said.
Icelandic president hails China's contributions to global women's cause
An exchange program between China and France has provided thousands of French students with the opportunity to attend Chinese universities over the past year, giving them a comprehensive and multidimensional view of the country through their studies.
In 2024, China proposed an initiative aimed at bringing the total number of French students in China to more than 10,000 and doubling the number of young Europeans on exchange programs to China within the next three years.
Then, in June of that year, the education ministries of China and France jointly launched the Young Envoys Scholarship (YES) program during the first China-France Education Development Forum held in Paris.
Among the students to take advantage of the program is Mathis Champaigne, a French master's exchange student from the Institute of Higher Electronic Education (ISEP) in Paris. Through YES, he arrived at the School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) this September for a five-month study program.
According to the student, the program offered a valuable opportunity to learn about artificial intelligence (AI) from renowned scholars.
"In this country, you are very advanced in this AI field and so you have a lot of researchers, a lot of universities, very involved in this AI research. So for me that was an opportunity to learn from a great professor in a great university," Champaigne said.
Currently, 29 French students from seven French universities are studying at HUST across various majors, for periods ranging from two weeks to a full academic year. For some, a short-term exchange can give way to deeper ambitions.
"I want to extend my semester and stay longer because I feel like here the campus is made for students to have good experience while studying," said another YES program participant of HUST, an undergraduate student from the University of Strasbourg.
Since the initiative was proposed over a year ago, more than 8,300 French students have come to China for exchanges and studies, helping to spur a broader trend across Europe, with about 32,000 students from across the continent having chosen to undertake exchange programs in China.
The program also partners with other Chinese institutions, including the East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST), where exchange students have had similarly successful experiences.
"So, the YES program is a really good program to study abroad and you can choose many different topics and minors. I think that's the best way to see China," said Paul Ferrigno, another YES program participant of ECUST, a graduate student from Montpellier Higher College of Chemistry.
"And engineers in the future, they will have to see by themselves how this country is changing very quickly, how this country is very good in innovation, research, technology, and finally how China is addressing global warming and sustainable development," said Jacques Mercadier, French dean of the International Elite Engineering School of ECUST.
Exchange program fosters China-France partnership in talent cultivation
