On Tuesday 8 April our usual lunch at the Kempinski but with a unusual topic.
Speaker Committee Chair Joerg introduced the speaker Mr. Francesco Sisci, commentator for the Italian daily Il Sole 24ore, Commentator for Asia Times with the column Sinograph, frequent commentator on International affairs for CCTV and Phoenix TV. His topic was “Vatican and China”.

Mr. Sisci has been living in China for almost 30 years and witnessed many changes in Catholics in China. Chinese Catholics are split, yet they are a tiny minority of less than 1% of the population, about 6-12 million people. In the English-language Global Times on 19 March, China signaled a more open position. The article started out claiming that the Chinese Patriotic Association does not want the Vatican to interfere in bishop appointments, but then it went on to give a positive assessment of the Pope (actually China is pretty impressed with many world leaders paying a special visit to the Vatican). The article said China and the Vatican do not have diplomatic ties, but it left out the usual warning to Rome about cutting ties with Taiwan. Pope Francis wrote to President Xi Jinping at the time of his election, and Mr. Xi replied with a letter. It is the first time China has ever admitted publicly of an exchange of messages at the highest level with the Vatican. This admission is groundbreaking, and certainly far more important than a refrain about the bishops, apparently delivered to satisfy a domestic constituency hostile to warmer ties with Rome.
Rotarian Urpo thanked Mr. Sisci for the interesting presentation on behalf of the club.

What I learned later is that the beautification of Matteo Ricci, along with another famous Chinese Catholic, could materialize this year. That would be a convenient opportunity to review the relations with the Vatican.

On Tuesday 1 April we had our regular weekly lunch of the Beijing Rotary at Kempinski Hotel.

This time, a unique speaker: Mr. Oliver Schwab, the executive director of World Economic Forum in China about the development from Davos to China. Oliver, who is resident in Beijing since several years, gave us some historical overview on the development of WEF, in particular in China.

Oliver is the son of Professor Klaus Schwab, the Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, an independent, impartial, not-for-profit Foundation committed to improving the state of the world. Since its inception in 1971, the Forum has become the world’s foremost multistakeholder organization and has been a driver for reconciliation efforts in different parts of the world, as well as the catalyst of numerous public-private partnerships and international initiatives. For more information: http://www.weforum.org/

In 1998, Klaus Schwab and his wife Hilde created the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, which seeks to identify, recognize and disseminate initiatives in social entrepreneurship that have significantly improved people’s lives and have the potential to be replicated on a global scale. The Foundation supports a network of 200 social entrepreneurs around the world.
In China, the next event is the “Annual Meeting of the New Champions”, in Tianjin, 10 – 12 September 2014. The previous meeting “Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2013” was held in Dalian, 11 – 13 September 2013.
You must give credit to the Professor, starting up a forum that is the talk of the business world, all over the planet.
Oliver also received a copy of my book “Toxic Capitalism”.

The rest of our lunch was filled with the usual internal updates while Sergeant-at-Arms Gilbert kept order and collected the Happy Money.