Attenborough shows his China film credentials

Diplomatic Pouch | Mike Peters

The British embassy hosted an exclusive screening of clips followed by a talk with Sir David Attenborough, Britain's best-known natural history filmmaker, in Beijing last week.

During his time in China, Attenborough is traveling with his producer, Anthony Geffen, to Yunnan and Liaoning provinces to make a new series about the evolution of vertebrates for the BBC.

Throughout his career, Attenborough has championed breakthroughs in innovation and technology, pushing new boundaries in filming the natural world and illustrating, among other things, global climate change.

British Ambassador to China Sebastian Wood, who hosted the event, said he hoped Attenborough's new series about China "will excite and engage audiences around the globe".

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Chinese President Hu Jintao received credentials presented by ambassadors from five countries last week at the Great Hall of the People. The ambassadors are Dennis Nguk Yang Nai from Vanuatu, Masato Kitera from Japan, Alberto Bradanini from Italy, Muhammad Azizul Haque from Bangladesh and Mohamed Rasheed from the Maldives.

Also last week, Hu announced the appointment of Wei Wei as China's new ambassador to India, replacing Zhang Yan.

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Afghanistan's Ambassador Sultan A. Baheen said goodbye to friends and colleagues last week and flew back to Kabul after almost four years in Beijing. But his Beijing connection is far from over: His next assignment is likely to be China-related, as all three of his sons will be studying in the capital next year.

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Indian Ambassador J. Jaishankar and his wife, Kyoko, hosted a reception on Friday night to celebrate his country's 64th Republic Day at the Beijing Marriott Hotel Northeast.

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US Consul-General for Guangzhou Jennifer Galt was in Nanning last week to introduce a US quilt show on the latest stop of its China tour. "I am especially delighted to introduce these quilts to Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, which with its beautiful textiles, embroidery and brocade is wedded in the similar tradition from which these American quilts come." Galt, US master quilter Carole Harris, and Qin Pu, deputy director-general from the region's culture department, opened The Sum of Many Parts at the Guangxi Museum of Nationalities, which runs until Feb 28.

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"Traveling today in an Airbus aircraft from Shanghai to Beijing, Guangzhou, elsewhere in Asia, Europe or America, you realize that the plane would not exist without the Elyse Treaty," Germany's consul-general in Shanghai Wolfgang Rohr said last week as Germany and France celebrated the 50th anniversary of the treaty of friendship between the two countries. In an article for China Business News headlined "The Franco-German friendship is an engine of European integration", French Ambassador to China Sylvie Bermann and German Ambassador Michael Schaefer noted that the fact that their countries "jointly lead major industrial projects like Airbus was unthinkable 50 years ago" in the wake of two world wars.

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China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi held a group meeting with EU ambassadors last week at the invitation of Ambassador Markus Ederer, head of the delegation of the European Union to China. Yang met with envoys of the 27 EU member states and Croatia, which will officially join the EU this year. The diplomats exchanged views on China-EU relations and international and regional hotspot issues of common concern.

Send embassy news to michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn.