On December 4, CPAFFC President Li Xiaolin attended the celebration of UK-China Regional collabration held in Edinburgh together with the First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon. Vice Governor of Hubei Province Guo Shenglian, Deputy Mayor of Shanghai City Weng Tiehui, Vice Governor of Liaoning Province Wang Dawei, Deputy Mayor of Dalian City Lu Lin, Vice President of CPAFFC Song Jingwu, Cabinet Secretary of Scotland Fiona Hyslop, Lord Provost of City of Edinburgh Council Frank Ross, Lord Provost of City of Glasgow City Council Eva Bolander as well as representatives from Northern Ireland and Welsh attended the meeting. 

President Li mentioned in her speech that as a cornerstone in the “golden era” of China-UK relationship, local cooperation between the two sides had enhanced understanding, deepened friendship and improved the lives of the two peoples. She gave three suggestions for future China-UK local cooperation. Firstly, making the alignment of local development strategies a priority of local cooperation; secondly, driving forward local cooperation both through people-to-people exchange and economic cooperation; thirdly, improving China-UK local exchange mechanism through pragmatic cooperation.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon extended warm welcome to the local government representatives of the two countries. She pointed out that culture and education are the two key sectors in China-Scotland cooperation and she hoped this meeting could further promote exchanges between the local governments of the two sides. She also recalled her visit in China at the invitation of CPAFFC in 2015 and expressed wish for another visit in next year.

Since local cooperation was made part of China-UK high level people-to-people exchange mechanism and UK-China Regional Leaders Summit was first held in 2015, CPAFFC had held three meetings with the UK side.