companies and 14,000 attendees in a two-day event in 2014, in which, Chinese companies made their first debut including Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent. Chinese VicePremier Wang Yang delivered an opening ceremony speech, appraising a deepen and strengthen cooperation in innovations and start-ups between China and Finland. Wang Yang also attended the Sino-Finnish Business Forum on November 18th. ◆ Same sex marriage passed in Finland A bill legalizing same sex mar r iage in Finland was approved by the parliament on December 12th 2014, by a
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narrow 105-92 vote. So far, Finland is the last Northern Europe countr y that had passed the law, after Norway (2009) ,
Sweden
Denmark November rainbows in front of the Finnish parliament house in Helsinki, one hour before the vote for same-sex marriage. Photo by Anni Sairio
(2009) ,
(2012) ,
and
and 17 t h
in the world. Due to the intricacies of the Finnish legislative system, the law will eventually come into force in 2017. The vote came after 2.5 years of attempts by the homosexual lobby to gather 166,000 signatures to get it back into Parliament after being rejected in 2013. th ◆ 65 Anniversary bet-
Premier Li Keqiang met with Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb in Milan on Oct 17 , in Milan, Italy. Photo by english.gov.cn
ween China and Finland
T h is yea r 2015 m a rk s t he 65th anniversary of diplo-matic relationship between China and Finland, and also the inauguration of a new Finnish government. Finland is one of the earliest western countries that established
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