As a sub-session of the 2024 NEAR Members Workshop, Secretary-General LIM Byung-jin hosted a dialogue with the delegates from Shanxi, Shandong, Qinghai Provinces and Tianjin City on May 22.

Highlighting that the NEAR Members Workshop this year is the largest ever in terms of the number of participating member regions, Mr. Lim expressed his hopes that the Chinese members would make the best use of this Workshop interacting with South Korean, Japanese, Mongolian, Russian, and other member regions.

In particular, Mr. Lim conveyed his words of warm welcome and thanks to the new NEAR member, Qinghai Province, which applied for NEAR membership on January 15 this year. To the delegates from Tianjin City, Mr. Lim expressed his special interest in having the city as the new NEAR member and his hopes to see a good result through the efforts of the Tianjin Foreign Affairs Office.

To the delegates from Shandong Province, Mr. Lim acknowledged the region’s remarkable contributions to the NEAR such as serving as the NEAR chair and coordinating the Subcommittee on Oceans and Fisheries, hoping for its continued cooperation with NEAR. 

The Chinese member regions thanked Mr. Lim for his invitation and said they could actually feel that NEAR is an ever-evolving multilateral exchange platform for the regional governments of Northeast Asia in terms of the size and the level of the participating delegates of the Workshop this year. They also expressed their excitement to expand the opportunity of exchange with other NEAR members via the Workshop.

<Delegates from Shanxi Province>

YUE Yaochuan, chief of the Foreign Affairs Office of Shanxi Province, delivered an invitation letter to Mr. Lim for the 2024 Taiyuan Energy Low Carbon Development Forum, which will take place in Shanxi Province from September 20 to 22. 

<Delegates from Shandong Province>

CHEN Yugang, deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Office of Shandong province, acknowledged NEAR’s significant role as a multilateral exchange channel in Northeast Asia and promised his full support.

<Delegates from Qinghai Province>

ZHANG Xiaolong, level Ⅳ division rank official at the Foreign Affairs Office of Qinghai Province, stated that Qinghai will join as a new NEAR member this year and promised the region’s active participation in various NEAR events.

<Delegates from Tianjin City>

In regards to Tianjin’s joining NEAR membership, LI Liang, section chief at the Foreign Affairs Office of Tianjin, said he will report the matter and appeal to the Tianjin authority once he returns to China.