Volkswagen Group China: helping to build bridges through culture

Young musicians perform at the Sino-German Youth Communication Celebration Concert on Sept 23 in Beijing. Photos Provided to China Daily

In Volkswagen's view, the measure of a company's success in the 21st century goes beyond its annual profit and sales figures. Good companies must be willing to contribute more widely to the communities in which their business success is built to truly demonstrate their leadership.

Volkswagen Group China takes this responsibility seriously. Reflecting the group's more than 30 years of being in China, Volkswagen has long worked to replicate the close relationship it has enjoyed with its Chinese customers on a broader social level. It views culture as an ideal vehicle through which to achieve this.

Jochem Heizmann, member of the management board of Volkswagen Group and president and CEO of Volkswagen Group China, said they have always had a strong focus on culture and cultural exchanges, which is in line with the tradition of Volkswagen Group.

"I believe that communication means learning from each other, and is a process of understanding each other," Heizmann said. "We hope to deepen mutual understanding and exchange of knowledge between China and Germany through a variety of cultural projects."

Volkswagen Group China's promotion of culture and support for education and bilateral exchanges in the field has been steadily growing for a number of years. The umbrella for this effort is the PACE strategy - participation, connection, education and exchange.

Under PACE, Volkswagen Group China is creating new opportunities for participation in culture and art, proactively connecting people to new cultural experiences and promoting cultural education and bilateral exchange between China and Germany.

Volkswagen has supported a variety of fruitful activities in the cultural field.

In June, during a visit to Beijing, Volkswagen AG CEO Matthias Muller announced a new cultural exchange fund to foster dialogue between the youth of Germany and China.

Later in the same month, Volkswagen Group China supported the Chinese debut of the top productions from Germany's premier theater festival, Theatertreffen Berlin. For this initiative, it partnered with the Goethe-Institut to provide supporting workshops to encourage appreciation of dramatic arts.

Volkswagen also exclusively partnered with the Sino-German Youth Communication Celebration Concert in Beijing's Pudu Temple in September. The concert brought together outstanding young classical musicians from the German Music Council's renowned Jugend Musiziert youth competition and the first China Youth Music Competition in a superb show of how music is a language through which everyone can communicate.

As an ambassador of Chinese and German cultural exchange, Volkswagen Group China brings a variety of cultural activities to people around China. In the autumn of 2016, the Volkswagen North East China Chamber Music Festival was held in Dalian, and the first Jazz Festival was held in Urumqi.

The next highlight on the calendar will be the Chamber Music Matinee's "Factory meets Classic" in cooperation with the Shenyang Conservatory of Music, which will be held at Volkswagen Automatic Transmission (Dalian) Co Ltd this December.

Through Volkswagen Group of America's corporate partnership with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the group has helped to open educational pathways for people in China to the knowledge and experience of one of the world's most renowned art institutions.

This includes the launch of a photography course in October, Seeing Through Pictures, in Mandarin. One of the museum's popular online courses, the program aims to address the gap between seeing and truly understanding photographs by introducing a diversity of ideas, approaches and technologies that inform their making.

It is based on MoMA's collection of 48 artists who have had a lasting effect on the evolution of photography over the past 180 years.

For Volkswagen Group China, its support for these activities is a natural extension of its commitment and connection to China, according to the company.

zhuanti@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/10/2016 page18)