nothin Harp To Pitch Businesses On China Trip | New Haven Independent

Harp To Pitch Businesses On China Trip

Contributed Photo

Agent Wolf completing the first leg of his mission with Changsha Municipal Deputy Secretary Tu Wenqing during a 2016 visit.

New Haven is on the hunt for new employers — in China.

A delegation led by Mayor Toni Harp plans to make three major stops in that nation next month to pop in on companies planning to expand in the U.S. with a pitch to land in New Haven.

The ten-day trip begins April 5. The main order of business will be to complete the final task in making official a new sister city” relationship between New Haven and Changsha, the capital of Hunan province with more than seven million people. (Read more about that here and here.) Harp has broadened the trip’s mission to include stops in Beijing and Hong Kong. Her administration has hired a consultant to identify four to five” businesses in the three cities that are considering a move to the U.S. East Coast and are open to discussing it with the New Haven delegation.

Allan Appel Photo

Mayor Harp with a hand-embroidere peony, CHina’s national flower, presented by Changsha visitors at a 2017 City Hall ceremony.

We want … to see if we can get them to come to New Haven or Greater New Haven,” Harp said on the latest edition of WNHH FM’s Mayor Monday” program. She said she’s defining the New Haven region as extending from Bridgeport up through Madison.

She emphasized the importance of cities working together across international borders, not just for business but also for cultural and educational reasons. Especially at a time when the Trump administration is pulling back from international trade and cooperation.

The world is a lot smaller. As human beings, we have got to find a way to work with one another, live together as a species, and keep ourselves going,” Harp said.

City culture and tourism czar Andy Wolf started the official process of establishing the sister-city relationship on Oct. 16, 2006, with a trip to Changsha. A delegation from Changsha then visited New Haven last June to sign documents. Next month’s New Haven delegation trip to Changsha is the final required step. (Mayors of the two cities need to be present in the same location at the same time.)

In addition to Harp, the New Haven delegation is to include Wolf, Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker, and Albertus Magnus College President Marc Camille, among others.

Changsha and New Haven have committed to cooperate on education, health care, trade, science, culture, and tourism exchanges to promote common prosperity and development.” They also committed to regular contacts” between their leaders and to mutual visits by business or government delegations.

In a separate interview on WNHH’s Dateline New Haven” program, Wolf spoke of establishing online chat rooms between students at Changsha and New Haven high schools; between students at the two cities’ universities; and between seniors in facilities like New Haven’s senior centers and Tower One/Tower East.

Contributed Photo

A Yali High performance for New Haven visitors.

Wolf acknowledged that because of censorship, those online relationships probably wouldn’t include talk of politics. But they could lead to mutual visits, ideas for entrepreneurial start-ups, and overall greater understanding.

New Haven has longstanding ties to Changsha. The Yale-China Association (previously known as Yale in China”) founded a nursing school and high school (called Yali”) in Changsha 110 years ago. The institutions have weathered World War II, the Korean War, and the Cultural Revolution, and have grown and prospered.

Changsha’s Yali” is actually a network of prep schools on ten campuses with a total of 16,000 students, Wolf said.

He was impressed by what he saw in his previous visit to Changsha.

You’ve never seen anything until you’ve seen a musical recitation with 1,100 violins,” he said.

New Haven’s other sister cities include Amalfi, Italy; Freetown, Sierra Leone; Leon, Nicaragua; Avignon, France; Afula-Gilboa, Israel; Hue, Vietnam; and San Francisco Tetlanohcan, Tlaxcala, Mexico.

Click on or download the above audio file or the Facebook Live video below to hear the full episode of WNHH FM’s Mayor Monday” program, which also touched on neighborhood management teams, state support for cities, the city GOP, the future of Stop & Shop on Whalley, renovated senior centers, and the proposal to rename Strong School after Barack Obama.

Click on the above audio file or the Facebook Live video below to hear an interview with Andy Wolf about the upcoming Changsha trip and sister-city relationship (among other subjects) on WNHH’s Dateline New Haven” program.

This episode of Mayor Monday” was made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.

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