– Report by Norm Jacknis, Westchester County Chief Information Officer

When County Executive Spano led the first trade mission to China eight years ago, many people in Westchester wondered "why bother going to China?" -- after all it was still understood to be a poor, developing country.

At the 1998 International Investment and Trade Fair in Xiamen that we attended, the only U.S. governments to have a presence were Westchester and Los Angeles counties. (We made the bigger splash.)

We then built up our own relationships and the presence of Westchester County during two subsequent trips in 2002 and 2005. 

Now, after decades of double digit economic growth, China has one of the largest economies in the world. Every day marks new connections between the American and Chinese economies.

In 2006, China is an obvious place to go for those interested in the economic development of their own local economies and searching for new business opportunities for local companies.  Except for those Americans with their “heads in the sand” about how the world has changed, China has been a recent destination for leading businessmen, Governors Pataki and Schwarzenneger, among others.

Fortunately, Westchester County has had a head start in promoting a presence there and has taken other steps to solidify relationships with key decision makers in the country.   As the connections between the American and Chinese economies have accelerated, we decided we needed to visit again to step up that presence, by introducing specific Westchester-based companies to potential Chinese partners as well as continue planting the seeds for the future by establishing further educational exchanges.

With the cooperation of the Westchester County Association and U.S. Department of Commerce, as well as my own contacts among Westchester’s technology companies, we put together a list of those companies who had expressed interested in doing business in China.  That included eight small-to-midsize technology companies and another two dozen companies in various other businesses.

In stepping up our marketing efforts, we also created 100 CDs of an electronic, multi-media magazine about Westchester County – in the Chinese language, as well as English – that we would hand out to every potential contact we met.  It emphasized our competitive advantages: the marketing, management and technology skills of our residents; our quality of life and openness to international business; and our location in the metropolitan area that dominates finance and communications world-wide.

You can see a copy by clicking for the Chinese or English version, which is now on our website – http://www.westchestergov.com/china06/magazine.htm – as a support for our future economic development efforts. 

We also wanted to continue our educational exchange efforts.  Last year, we took the President of Pace University, with his senior staff, to various Chinese universities and helped them obtain the necessary licenses to sign educational agreements there.  (After all, educational services are also a form of exports.) 

This year, we took the superintendent, board member and various teachers from the Briarcliff Manor School district to China to establish relationships at the secondary education level. 

In fact, these relationships started in Westchester as we helped arrange the enrollment of a Chinese 6^th grader in Briarcliff for a few weeks, while her mother (Vice President of Human Resources at Lenovo) was here on business.  That was a very successful experience from both sides and just whetted the school district’s appetite for more long standing relationships with Chinese schools.

The twin economic and educational goals meant this trip would include, in addition to myself (representing the technology sector here), County Executive Andy Spano, Economic Development Director Sal Carrera, Daisy Yau, Director of Asian-Pacific Affairs and Business Development, Westchester Child Advocate Brenda Resnick Spano, Briarcliff Superintendent Frances Wills, Briarcliff High School Principal Jim Kaishian, Board Trustee John O’Reilly, Technology Director Eric Knutsen, and six teachers: Tracy Campanile, Deirdre Dilworth, David Golod, Nancy Lee, Dr. Jean Linville, Lee Lee Wong.

With this as the background to our trip, we set off for China on March 16.  It was the usual routine of getting up before 5 AM, off to JFK at 6 AM, with a change of planes at Tokyo’s Narita Airport and then on to Beijing.  We arrived at our hotel after 10:00 PM on March 17 – that’s 9:00 AM, March 17 in Westchester, or about 27 hours of traveling, door-to-door.

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