Wuxi
& Shanghai
Report by Norm Jacknis, CIO
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The Westchester County Trade Delegation gathered
around 11:30 am, Sunday morning August 25th at Kennedy Airport.
More than 24 hours later, we walked into
our hotel in Wuxi where it was very early morning
on Tuesday.
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Wuxi is a "city" (really a county
in our definition) of four million people and
1500 square miles. It is approximately
75 miles from Shanghai and is gradually merging
into that metroplex. (The name of the
city is pronounced woo-shee.)
Why were we headed to Wuxi? The first
reason is that a few months a major national
Chinese television news magazine program wanted
to feature two especially innovative and effective
public leaders from China and the United States.
County Executive Spano was one of those leaders.
Mayor Wangrong of Wuxi was his Chinese
counterpart. During the course of the
television program, the two leaders hit it off.
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Wuxi then invited a delegation from Westchester
to visit China. The Deputy Director of
Wuxi's Foreign Affairs Office met us at Shanghai
airport and has been our guide. (In an
ever increasingly competitive global marketplace,
it is noteworthy that every Chinese municipality
of any size has its own office for foreign affairs
and trade.)
The second reason we went to Wuxi is that
it is one of the hot spots of economic development
in China, itself a fast growing part of the
global economy. Wuxi is called the birthplace
of Chinese industry and is a relatively affluent
area. For example, some 60% of the households
have computers, most of those with Internet
access. Wuxi regularly comes out near the top of China's major economic
areas.
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| Tuesday August 27th, County Executive
Spano and the team started the day by meeting with the
director and staff of the Wuxi New District
-- 16 square miles of converted farmland that
is now one of the major centers of high technology
research, development and production in China.
It combines aspects of an incubator, an
industrial park, a planned city and a special
export/import zone.
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The discussion in the morning was wide-ranging
and covered even sensitive issues, like preserving
the environment in a country undergoing massive
industrialization. Click
here
to listen to an example. (.wav
288KB)
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| Many major multi-national technology and
manufacturing corporations have facilities there.
As an example, we met briefly with York
Air Conditioning, which uses the location as
a manufacturing center for the Asian marketplace. We then met with Mr.
Sheng (Gus) Tsao, the founder and the current
C.E.O. of a venture capital backed software
company, Evermore Software. They have
been building the next generation of office
software to compete against Microsoft. The
quality and enthusiasm of this company -- never
mind their outsized ambitions -- were very clear.
We discussed how they could work with
Westchester companies to bring their product
to markets outside of China.
At lunch time, we met with China Telecom
to work out how we can set up high speed Internet
and videoconferencing connections. These
would make it much easier for joint projects
to move forward.
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In the afternoon, we met with the foreign
trade officials to go over several areas where
there might be mutual benefit. They proposed
a formal mutual exchange agreement, which we
then proceeded to work on.
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| At night, we were the guests of the Mayor
at a formal reception and dinner. Both
he and County Executive Spano had an interesting
discussion - part of which you can hear by clicking
on this. (wav 1.5MB) Then
they signed the formal agreement. In a
sense, we now have our own trade treaty with
a fast growing area of Asia.
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The next day we headed off briefly to Shanghai
on the way to Tianjin..
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Home - Westchester
County China Trade Delegation 2002
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