Garcia visits China's rich provinces

NANJING, JIANGSU, CHINA—After the two-day successful visit in Beijing, the Cebu delegation led by Governor Gwendolyn Garcia has moved to another one of China’s wealthy provinces to promote Cebu and to establish international connections.

 Garcia’s team met up Tuesday night with former lady Vice Governor Wu Xiajun of Jiangsu province and current president of Jiangsu’s Provincial People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries at Jinling Hotel in Nanjing, where they both discussed programs that are instrumental for the success of their respective areas of concern.

 While Cebu is considered as the richest province in the Philippines, for so many years, Jiangsu has maintained its reputation as a hotspot for economic development in China, subsequently earning for itself the title of being one of China’s most prosperous provinces.

 Nanjing is the capital city of Jiangsu, which used to be China’s capital.

 Wu said that she is “hoping to make future ties with Cebu,” where they could also learn from its culture and exchange ideas in the aspects of agriculture, economic, trade and tourism.

 Jiangsu, with its vantage location being situated along the east coast of the country, with a coastline of over one thousand kilometers along the Yellow Sea and the Yangtze River passes through its southern parts, has thrived on agriculture based primarily on rice and wheat.

 The province other cash crops also include cotton, soybeans, peanuts, grape, hemp, and tea, among others. It is also one of China’s biggest producers of coal, petroleum, natural gas deposits, and non-metal minerals such as rock salt, sulfur, phosphorus, and marble. Its salt mines in Huaiyin are considered one of China’s biggest collections of deposits. Its Lake Taihu region is also China’s major base of silk production.

 Last year, Jiangsu’s nominal Gross Domestic Product was pegged at 3.03 trillion yuan—the third largest GDP of all the provinces in China, with an annual growth rate of 12.5 percent.

 As for Cebu, Garcia said it does not only boast for having zero debt, but it is also the country’s “richest province” with P20 billion in assets.

 And while Jiangsu earns millions of yuan from several of its lucrative industries, Cebu earns income from manufacturers of furniture, toys, house wares, fashion accessories and electronics.

 Garcia said with such productive industries, Cebu accounts for 15-20 percent of the country’s total exportation.

 Also, she added that Cebu is a “fast developing” as an information technology center as well as a center for business process outsourcing.

  She added that the province has “already highly developed workforce” and every year there are over 40,000 skilled individuals who graduated from training school, “making us the richest source of skilled manpower.” Cebu also accounts for 80 percent of shipping operations in the country.

 As with the tourism industry, Garcia said “we are the richest world of culture, especially since my admininistratio has focused on appreciation and preservation of heritage sites that makes us now top tourist destination in the entire country.”

 “And in our drive to promote Cebu to other regions like Asia, Europe and theUnited States, we hope to sustain this leadership position in the tourism industry,” she added.

 Garcia said Cebu is also a home to Chinese, citing several Chinese investors own and operate businesses in the province. — Liv G. Campo/WAB   (FREEMAN NEWS)