Interview: Nokia' Siilasmaa ready to work with Chinese partners on innovation

Among a series of signed documents witnessed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto at the Presidential Palace here in early April, the innovation partnership impressed Nokia's head Risto Siilasmaa the most.

As agreed by the representatives of the two countries, a Finno-Sino innovation council is to be established to guide and promote business cooperation on innovation, explore new ways and provide policy advices.

The new platform is considered part of the future-oriented new-type cooperative partnership between Finland and China.

As Chairman of Nokia, the Finnish IT giant, Siilasmaa has been nominated to chair the Finnish team within the council.

"Both countries will nominate key players from the industry, and I hope very much I would get some of my old friends from the Chinese technology companies to join on the other side," Siilasmaa said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

While the list of members of the Chinese side has not been disclosed, Siilasmaa named as hopefuls Jack Ma, Pony Ma, Lei Jun, Robin Li, respectively head of Alibaba, Tencent, Xiaomi and Baidu.

Siilasmaa has sat on the same panel discussions and in the same advisory boards with the above figures and he expects to continue working with them in the new framework.

"We are committed to working very hard on finding some innovative ways for the two countries to achieve our common goals together," said Siilasmaa.

Asked to speak about the shared goals, he said "we have certain challenges that all the humanity faces." No further details have been published by either of the two governments over the new structure so far.

Siilasmaa echos President Xi's call on many occasions for embracing "a human community with shared destiny."

"We are moving towards a world that would be even smaller. So we truly have to figure out the way for all of us to live together and support each other," said Siilasmaa.

Chinese Ambassador to Finland Chen Li earlier spoke highly of Finnish expertise on bio-energy and green economy. He said Chinese and Finnish economies are highly complementary and there are huge potentials in business cooperation.

Siilasmaa believes the newly-confirmed bilateral partnership will benefit Finnish side more. "Finland being a fairly small country, there is a much bigger opportunity for this partnership to have an impact on Finland than on China," he told Xinhua.

"Finnish companies are very good in certain areas, on certain narrow but very deep fields, and in those areas we definitely can have an impact on China as well," he said.

Siilasmaa appreciated the fact that President Xi praised the Finnish spirit of "sisu" -- a Finnish term meaning persistence in time of hardship. Xi made the comment in his article published by Helsinki Times ahead of his visit to Finland on April 4.

Siilasmaa said he was happy to find similar words in Chinese proverbs as well. He has been learning the Chinese language, history and culture for years, and he believes it is a sign to show respect and a way of building trust in global business management.

He disclosed that Nokia China is under discussion with a Chinese investor to turn the Finnish subsidiary company into a joint venture. Endi