There are several big Chinese investment plans ongoing in Lapland.
Lapland seems to have found a way to put together large-scale industrial investments and fast-growing tourism resulting in an optimal socioeconomic growth that also sustains the region’s pristine bio-diversity and improves people’s well-being.
In a paper presented at the 2005 Bio-economy Investment Summit in Brussels, Invest in Lapland’s Advisor Jaakko Pöykkö said Finnish Lapland offers a good opportunity to invest in forest-based biomass products processing. He estimated the worth of industrial investments in Lapland over the next 10 to 15 years at 14 to 15 billion euros.
Pöykkö’s forecast has been proven correct, with Chinese businesses coming forward to make major investments in bio-economy, the forest-based biomass products-processing sector, prompting Lapland to rank the Chinese at the top of its list of potential investors.
There still seems to be an ongoing courtship between the land of the Great Wall and the land of Aurora Borealis. Business is well underway, if not yet signed and sealed.