Shanghai - Thursday, March
23, 2006
Government of Pudong New Area
With the assistance of Mr. Ma and Larry Ding (Lenovo’s Shanghai
Executive Director and General Manager), we met with officials of the District
government of the very modern and fairly newly created Pudong district on the
east side of the main river going through Shanghai.
This picture shows County Executive Spano with Dr. Zhu Xu Dong, Director
General of the Science & Technology Bureau of the Pudong Government, and to
his left, Mr. Jack Xiao who runs the Shanghai Pudong New Area International Exchange Center.
The Pudong New Area has an extensive and successful program of
economic development. As is true for Westchester, their current focus is on
small to midsize IT companies, for whom they have created a high tech corporate
park of approximately 15 square miles. In this park, they are working to
improve the underlying service environment for these companies, including
lawyers, accountants, marketing experts, etc.
The local government has also set up an annual science fund
(equivalent to about US$40 million) that these companies compete for. The
government is also helping to guarantee loans and attract private venture
capital for these companies.
They have also set up bilateral pacts with Finland and South Holland province, in which the companies on both sides cooperate to varying
degrees from regular trade relationships to technology parks. They had a keen
interest in setting up a similar relationship with Westchester, which we will
be pursuing. [Note: Since returning, we have already continued discussions
with them.]
Just to give you an idea of what kind of ambitions there are in
China, we were greeted on Friday morning by the front page of the tabloid
Shanghai Daily (its English language local newspaper). The main story was
headlined “City’s science vision: robots, maglevs, moon”.
Below is a current photo of just one part of Shanghai’s ever
expanding skyline.
continue
March 2006 Report
by Norm Jacknis, Westchester
County Chief Information Officer
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