Liu Fanghui, chief of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of Shandong province, presents a gift of a paper-cutting to Pam Frisella, mayor of Foster City, California, on Wednesday. Yu Wei / China Daily

Delegates from Penglai, a city in China's eastern Shandong Province, visited Northern California recently to talk about investment opportunities to benefit the city.

The delegation, led by Liu Fanghui, director of Shandong China Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, and Penglai mayor Sun Yebao described the business environment in Penglai and discussed possible areas of cooperation between Penglai and California during an investment workshop at Foster City, California on Wednesday. The event was co-organized by the US-China Shandong Friendship Association and the American Asia Development Association.

"We warmly welcome the Penglai delegation to Foster City," said Pam Frisella, mayor of Foster City. "Penglai and Foster City have a lot in common. We are both coastal cities with a beautiful environment and we are good places to do business."

Frisella added that Foster City was centrally located to San Francisco, San Jose and East Bay. "We would draw from all of those communities around Foster City," she said. "And, a Chinese investor will feel at home because we have about a 45 percent Asian population in the city."

Mayor Sun called California the center of technology innovation. "We came to visit this time with two main purposes," he said. "One is to seek enterprise cooperation from the business level, and the other is to attract the local academic, scientific talents to come back to Penglai to support the city's development. We would offer you the best working conditions."

Penglai is situated in the north end of the Jiaodong Peninsula, bordering on the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea. It has four open ports and the Delong railway running across the city.

Penglai is famous for its wine. Located at 37 degrees north latitude, Penglai is considered one of the seven grape coasts in the world. According to Sun, grapevines now cover 10,667 hectares of the region producing an annual wine output of 140 million liters. There are more than 70 domestic and foreign wine enterprises in Penglai, including well-known labels like COFCO Great Wall, Chateau Junding and France Lafite.

"We hope California will import our wines as we are drinking more and more wines that come from California," Sun said.

The mayor said the delegation will visit wineries in Napa and Sonoma, the two world-class wine counties in California. Penglai is, in fact, linked in a sister-city relationship with Sonoma.

"We will exchange ideas about equipment and technology with people from local wine industry," Sun said. "I think both sides can strengthen exchanges and learn from each other."

California, because of its geography and historically strong ties to China, is one of the hottest spots for Chinese delegations to visit and invest. Such was the case for delegation from Shandong.

In April, a delegation from Qingdao, a major city in eastern Shandong province, visited California to set up a trade office in San Francisco. In May, the vice mayor of Zibo, a city in central Shandong, led a delegation to California to launch Hanhai Zibo Life Science Park, the first US China Life Science Park, in Burlingame, California.

At the same time, California's relationship with China has become stronger than ever recently.

California governor Jerry Brown just had his first meeting with Chinese Consul General in San Francisco Yuan Nansheng on Tuesday in California's capital Sacramento.

According to Xia Xiang, commercial counselor at the Chinese consulate in San Francisco, "The governor mentioned he had a 40-minute meeting with President Xi Jinping in Indian Wells last weekend. The main topic between the two was focused on how to further strengthen cooperation in the areas of economy and trade between the two countries."

Governor Jerry Brown led a weeklong trade mission to China last April. The visit has yielded many fruitful results, including a "landmark agreement" that brought California, China's Ministry of Commerce and six Chinese provinces together, to expand trade and investment, particularly in the sectors of new energy, environmental protection and infrastructure.

"Shandong was one of those six provinces," Xia said, adding that he believes more achievements will be made between the two states under the cooperative mechanism.

"Hundreds of Chinese companies are coming to the US with the same goal, that is to learn advanced technologies and skills to bring back for their country's further development," said Lester Lee, former chairman of Monte Jade Science and Technology Association and president of Recortec, a US manufacturer of rack mount products for use in EIA equipment racks.

"I think knowing oneself and each other is an important prerequisite for any cooperation," Lee said. "In order to be distinguished, either should first know its own strengths, then take what it needs."

Yuwei12@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 06/14/2013 page10)