Beijing
Report by Norm Jacknis, CIO
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Beijing is the capital of China and one of the world's major cities, but it is much more than a city
in our sense, since it covers an area the size
of Belgium.
Although Shanghai often gets attention as
the business center of China, Beijing seems
also to be a major business center. It
is now filled with many modern office buildings
-- which seem to rent for about a quarter of
rents around the New York area.
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We spent the morning of August 30 at
our first stop, the offices of the Mayor shown
in the picture to the right. (The building
was the Japanese embassy and headquarters of
the World War II Japanese occupation of China.)
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| Mayor Zhang Mao spoke freely, generally
in English without an interpreter. Although
we thought that the Beijing government might
be less interested in Westchester than other
less well known cities, that turned out not
to be the case. Mayor Zhang also described
the interest of Beijing in high tech. As
in all our other meetings, County Executive
Spano provided a summary of Westchester's strategic
assets and our companies. (Click here
and here
to listen to a part of this.)
We were fortunate to meet with Mayor Zhang,
since he was scheduled to leave the day after
for a six month course in marketing.
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By this point, we had had several good meetings
with Chinese officials and business people,
but wanted an experienced American perspective.
So, during the afternoon, we met with Christian Murck, Chairman
of the American Chamber of Commerce in China
and also Managing Director of a company that
helps American companies break into the Chinese
market. He provided us with valuable advice
and suggestions on how to move forward in the
international side of our economic development
efforts..
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| At night, we headed to Beihei park (pictured
to the right) for a dinner hosted by Mr. Li
Zhao, Director of Beijing's Foreign Economic
Relations and Trade Commission. The meeting
with Mr. Li was very friendly and we covered
a variety of ways that Westchester companies
could work with Beijing companies, especially
in biotechnology and information technology.
We also "got the ball rolling"
for videoconferences to encourage this trade
and cooperation.
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As noted in the Wuxi segment of this report,
County Executive Spano appeared on Chinese national
television. As a result, strangers were
familiar with him and Westchester. There
was continuing interest by the Chinese in his
visit.
On Saturday evening, a television news crew
interviewed Mr. Spano, Larry Dwyer of the County
Association, Sal Carrera, Economic Development
Director and myself for a half hour program
about our visit to China. This kind of
free promotion of the County was clearly a great
benefit.
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Since 1994, Westchester has had a sister city relationship with Jingzhou on
the Yangtze River in the central Hubei Province.
Although County Executive Spano's schedule
back home prevented us from visiting there on
this trip, a delegation from Jingzhou visited
with us Sunday morning, September 1. Pictured
in the right above are Mr. Wang Zuhua, Director
of the Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs
Bureau of Jingzhou and his Deputy, Ms. Deng
Yanxiang. |
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Home - Westchester
County China Trade Delegation 2002
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