A Formal Meeting with Press Coverage

On June 6th after breakfast, Jinshui and I went to a meeting called by Mr. Yi Ma, the Mayor of Huzhou Municipal People's Government. It was a formal meeting that involved the mayors and economic development officials of Huzhou and surrounding areas. Others at the meeting from outside Huzhou included the president of the Western Australian Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the managing director of Arcadia, a consortium of companies that deals with premium properties, and the owner of a Japanese company looking to do business in the HED zone. The formal meeting was a prelude to a session of the 10th Zhejiang Investment & Trade Symposium.

The mayor spoke first, providing an overview of Huzhou and its economic development progress and initiatives. Huzhou, in the central region of the Hangtze River Delta, includes three counties - Deqing, Changxing and Anji - and two districts - Wuxing and Nanxun. The municipality has been recognized as the China Tourist City of Excellence, China Environmental Protection Model City, China Landscape Garden City, and Chinese Charming City. Its traditional industries - silk, textile and construction materials - have been joined by other high technology and new technology industries, including biomedical, electronics, IT, and environmental protection, to name a few. In 2007, Huzhou was ranked first in Zhejiang Province for industrial growth.

After the mayor spoke, each of the attendees had an opportunity to make some remarks. Meeting participants were seated in bright yellow easy chairs arranged in an open square, with a second row of less comfortable seats behind the first row. On a table next to each chair in the front row, there was cup of hot tea, a bottle of water, and a microphone. As I learned, this was a fairly standard set-up for formal meetings. A woman sat behind me to translate the remarks of the mayor and others. A man with a video camera roamed in the middle of the open square, filming each participant as he made his remarks. After half an hour of remarks, the meeting adjourned and everyone walked to a large meeting room on the same floor of the hotel for a signing ceremony.