Mayor of San Francisco encourages closer cooperation with China

BEIJING, April 8 (People's Daily Online) Positive cooperation and exchanges going on between San Francisco and Chinese cities were stressed as Edwin M. Lee, mayor of San Francisco, paid official visit to People's Daily Online on April 3, 2013, the first of this kind after he assumed office in January, 2011.

During the interview following the visit, Mayor Lee also shows great interest in attracting more Chinese enterprises to participate in the cultural and scientific exchanges with San Francisco.

Regarding China's re-emergence as unprecedented economic opportunities for San Francisco, in 2008 the city created San Francisco's China Economic Development Initiative, ChinaSF, to help Chinese companies' business activities there.

The Mayor believed that through the ChinaSF relationships the Sino-US ties will be more successful if they have people understand what businesses they are looking for and assist them in finding not only the location but the right relationships to build their business.

"We would like the business not only to start in San Francisco, but also to stay and grow. We will work with them on how to increase the workforce, how to make sure the wage system and employee benefits are consistent with the American regulations that allowed them to be more successful, we are very investor-friendly in San Francisco, we want to have the business to succeed, to see through not only the beginning, but future generations of the business being successful," said Mayor Lee.

There have been five offices that are occupied by Chinese solar companies, which are lunching their North American headquarters in San Francisco and a number of China-owned clear-tech companies are also located in San Francisco.

ChinaSF has created its first office in San Francisco's sister city Shanghai and is planning to open offices in more Chinese cities.

"Since that was where we have the sister city. But we now have for the last two years the office here in Beijing. And we are conducting a search for a third office which should be in Guangzhou. The purpose of these offices would be to gain more contacts with the business community and present ideas of public and private ventures for future investment in both sides, in both China and San Francisco," said the Mayor.

The Mayor showed great confidence in the future cooperation by saying "we have been very happy and very satisfied with the cultural and economic exchanges that have gone on for more than three decades. But we want more. There is always a thirst for doing more with China."

Related reading:

Video: People's Daily Online interviews Mayor of San Francisco Edwin M. Lee

San Francisco Mayor Edwin M. Lee visits People's Daily Online

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