Diplomatic pouch: With mike peters

Young Chinese violin virtuoso Feng Ning, winner of the 2006 Paganini competition, will team up with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra for a series of concerts in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. "We receive every year a lot of tourists from China in Lucerne," LSO executive director Numa Bischof-Ullmann tells China Daily, "so I think it's high time we pay something back in homage to their passion for our city."

The orchestra, Switzerland's oldest symphony, begins the concert series June 28 in the Chinese capital, and Swiss ambassador Blaise Godet will host a reception for the performers backstage at the National Center for the Performing Arts. US conductor James Gaffigan, who won raves from the New York Times this month at the Spoleto Festival USA, takes the baton, and Turkish pianist Fazil Say will also be featured.

Bischof-Ullmann says the concert series is the LSO's first visit to China and its first collaboration with Feng. "We've heard him in a concert in the KKL Lucerne," he says. The orchestra has played with another Chinese celebrity soloist, the pianist Lang Lang. and performed some works by Tan Dun.

China's Foreign Ministry briefed almost 100 Chinese and foreign correspondents last week about Premier Wen Jiabao's official visit to Europe, which will include stops in Hungary, the UK and Germany from June 24-28.

Fu Ying, vice-minister of foreign affairs, noted that Wen's visit to Hungary would be the first for a Chinese premier in 24 years. She said Wen will hold talks with Prime Minister Viktor Orbn and meet with President Pal Schmitt and Speaker of Parliament Laszlo Kover. Hungary holds the rotating presidency of the Europe Union.

In Britain, the premier will hold talks with Prime Minister David Cameron and pay field visits to a number of China-Britain cooperation projects.

In Berlin, she said, Wen's main task would be to launch a previously agreed "China-Germany government consultation mechanism" with Chancellor Angela Merkel that will be a first for Beijing and a foreign government. Wen will also meet with President Christian Wulff and attend the sixth China-Germany Economic and Technological Cooperation Forum with Merkel.

Wang Zhiming, vice director-general of the department of European affairs, Ministry of Commerce, pointed out that Germany is China's biggest trade partner and source of foreign investment and technology import in Europe.

Amel Kovacevic, Bosnia and Herzegovina's ambassador to China, is on a fact-finding mission to Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, just two days after a similar trip to Nanning. "I want to use my time in China to see as much as possible, to learn, understand and identify fields of cooperation" between the two countries, he says.

Last week's Beijing International Education Expo 2011 drew about 80,000 visitors for educational seminars and face-to-face discussions with representatives of foreign universities, organizations and embassies. Institutions from the UK and US were the hot choices again this year. "We attach great importance to Chinese students who study in Britain," Ambassador Sebastian Wood told China Daily. According to figures from the British embassy, more than 90,000 Chinese students are studying in the UK.

Manchester Metropolitan University, the second-largest university in the UK, has opened preparatory-course classes in about 15 cities in China over the past four years.

Embassy news can be sent to mike.peters.cd@gmail.com