Rainer Spurzem, Qianren Thousand Talents Plan Professor at NAOC, has been appointed "State Special Foreign Expert" by the organisation department of the central committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC).
At this occasion he was received with 20 other foreign experts for a 90 minutes meeting with the new leader of CPC and future president of China, Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping said during that meeting that  "China has pursued a course that is supported by people from all over the world, that encourages openness and emulation of useful experiences in other countries and will bring win-win results to both China and the rest of the world".
Reports and pictures of the event, which already took place on December the 5th, 2012, can be found at this link in Chinese and at this page in English.