New Zealand China Friendship Society

New Zealand China Friendship Society
Annual National Conference
17 – 19 June 2005

9.00am., Sunday 19 June

Rediscovering China Through our Sister Cities

President of the NZCFS, Margaret Cooper, fellow delegates and guests.
It gives me very great pleasure to address you this morning. However, it is pleasure tinged with sadness, as I pass on to you an apology from Mr Jeremy Dwyer, President of Sister Cities New Zealand. As you know Jeremy was to have addressed you this morning, but owing to ill health is unable to be here. You all know Jeremy’s great love and passion of China and her people, and also his passionate commitment to the sister city movement, with its focus on people to people contact, so you can imagine his disappointment at not being here to address you. Jeremy sends you all his warmest greetings and best wishes for a good conference.

However, I’d like to think that for me this particular cloud has a silver lining, as it has given me the opportunity, and the real pleasure, as a Vice President of Sister Cities New Zealand, to address you.

Those of you who know me well will know the great love and respect I have for the Chinese people. In my role as one of three International Relations Coordinators at the Christchurch City Council, I have the pleasure of, amongst other things, servicing the Christchurch-Gansu Friendly Relations Committee, which operates the link between Christchurch and Gansu Province. This 21 year relationship is very successful and vigorous; it keeps me very busy at times, but rest assured for me it is a labour of love. For instance, at the moment the committee has two teachers at a senior school in Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu Province. It sends two teachers there annually, for three months at a time. If it had the funding it could send 500 teachers; as in all parts of China the need for English language teachers in Gansu Province is huge. These two teachers are doing amazing things besides their actual classroom teaching, like teaching drama, making a point of talking to people in the shops and streets, to improve their Chinese, and riding camels! In the course of doing these things they are meeting new friends, and there is no doubt in my mind that this is not the last time either of them will be in China. In fact one of them is going to a school near Beijing in a couple of months and will probably stay there until December. She said to me in an email last month that at the moment she’s having such an amazing time she can’t imagine returning to New Zealand. The other teacher has just emailed us a 42 page report on his experiences to date, since he arrived there in March! This will be a very valuable resource document for other teachers who go there in the future. The committee is also taking a tour group to China two weeks from now, led by chair of the committee Bill Studholme, so, as I say, it’s always busy.

“Rediscovering China through our sister cities”. A simple but powerful statement really. But let’s face it, quite a few of us here today probably first visited China because of a sister city link. And of course that visit won’t simply have been to Wuxi, or Kunming, or Gansu Province or whichever is your sister city, because you know, that’s the joy of humans isn’t it, we’re curious creatures, we want to know and learn, so when we go somewhere we make sure we pick up as many experiences along the way as possible. So when we go to our sister city in China we do it via several other locations. And there’s another thing as well - we very often don’t just do it on our own, we either join a group or take a group of friends along. And of course we also take our cameras with us, so we capture all the wonderful and exciting moments of the trip so that we can share our adventures with friends and family on our return. Of course depending on our skill with a camera they can regard that as either a blessing or a curse! Those pictures and tales you return with slowly but surely open eyes and minds which may well otherwise stay closed. I think it also makes us look through different eyes at some of the information provided by the various media, which can often be a sobering exercise.

There are currently around 25 sister city links between New Zealand and China. Some of these go back 20 years or more, others are more recent. There are another three or four in the stage of courting each other, like coy suitors. And in fact I received an email from Bill Willmott just a few days ago about an enquiry he had received from Zhangye, a town about 450km north of Lanzhou, the capital city of Gansu Province. My particular role on the Board of SCNZ is the handling of these approaches. SCNZ has a website, and these details are entered there for New Zealand communities to look at and maybe approach regarding making contact. The website address is shown at the bottom of this presentation; I would encourage you to have a look at it for Chinese cities looking for links; maybe you can help facilitate that in your area? As well as giving details regarding new approaches, the website also gives a lot of information on what SCNZ can do for you and your community. I strongly recommend it to you.

I don’t know how many of you are involved in sister city activities in China, but for those of you who are not I can assure you it’s a most rewarding experience. I’m thinking here in particular of things like student exchanges. There are few things more inspiring than to see the look on the face of a 16 year old who has just come back from three or four weeks in north west China, especially when it involves having been home hosted. It is no exaggeration to say that those experiences leave a stamp on young minds forever. And of course in most cases these young people return the favour for Zhang Ying or Lue Xinglai when she or he comes to stay here; that’s usually part of the visit deal. They in turn get to meet the rest of John or Mary’s family; brothers and sisters, Gran and Pop, uncles and aunts, school friends, teachers – it’s like throwing a pebble in a pond. And if the young people you send to your sister cities are anything like the ones we send from here in Christchurch, you will know they are quality young people who are tomorrow’s leaders. SCNZ has recently appointed a Youth Adviser, whose role is to put in place a framework for the operation of a youth section of SCNZ around the country. We all understand the vital importance of having young people involved in what we do.

May I suggest that if you do not already do so, that you look at having your sister city relationship in China operated from your end through a committee based in your local community. Having a councillor or two on that committee doesn’t go amiss either; very handy if and when you need to look for funding support for a particular project. Being on the committee they understand what you are doing, and don’t buy into all the ‘junket’ nonsense some people come out with regarding the sister city movement. It’s very handy to have a media person involved for the same reason.

If we want to live in a happy world - and for all the dreadful things that happen I still can’t believe that’s not the desire of 99% of the human race - then we need to ensure the parents of tomorrow are as educated and tolerant of the foibles of the human race as possible. Student exchanges with our sister cities in China are a powerful tool in making this happen. SCNZ and NZCFS have a very important role to play in achieving this.

Some of you will know of Gareth Morgan, an interesting economist in this country; he used to be on television quite a bit and has a newspaper column. He and five friends are currently doing a three month motorcycle journey, following the outbound journey Marco Polo is purported to have traveled to Xanadu. The journey of course goes through China, and the north west of China in particular. A few months back he emailed Bill Willmott for any help with contacts in Gansu, and Bill forwarded it to me to follow up on. The outcome of that is that in the next few days they will visit the Shandan Bailie School in Shandan, which is a sister school to Darfield High School here in Canterbury, and then spend three days at the school in Lanzhou where the two teachers I’ve already mentioned are. I know from emails I‘ve had from our teachers that they’re in for a great welcome. And the guide we had when I was in Gansu last year, and who now lives in Beijing, is going to meet with them when they arrive in Beijing and make them welcome. What do you think all of this is going to do to increase cultural understanding, especially when you realize they have a website (address below), and Gareth is doing regular newspaper, radio and television reports of the tour. They are all influential people; maybe one day they’ll help with funding a project for you??

A lot of you here this morning will be long time friends of China. By ‘long time’ I mean friends of China from the days when publicly stating that you were a friend of China would have probably brought the chatter at many a dinner party to an embarrassed hush. Well, you’ve lived through all that, and come out the other end; you’ve proven to be not just fair weather friends of China, but friends through all types of political weather. Now the sun is shining more and more. And guess what – the Chinese respect you for that. You were with them in the hard times, and they know that hasn’t always been easy or comfortable for you; rest assured, they won’t forget.

And of course that’s where the sister city movement comes into its own. Quite simply the sister city movement is based on People to People contact, or P2P as we call it. That’s the joy and the strength of the sister city movement; it sidesteps what goes on between governments; it’s based on human contact at a people to people level. In theory Kabul and New York could be sister cities. In fact after 9/11 David Close, at that time a Christchurch City Councillor, said to me, with only a slight exaggeration, that he wondered if it would have happened had Kabul and New York been sister cities? Of course the answer is probably yes, it would have, but we can all see the point he’s making can’t we? I suspect it’s a lot harder to shoot someone if you’ve met them and like them. Sounds simple really doesn’t it, but it’s true. A lot of suspicion is bred through ignorance of each other; of other’s values, customs, beliefs. For the health of the world that’s a dangerous state of mind and it’s beholden on all of us to do all we can to overcome it.

I have found it personally disturbing to look back over the years and compare some of my ideas and opinions of other countries and people, to what they are now; I’m sure you’ll agree it can be a rather sobering exercise. And when you look at it, why do you think your ideas have changed? I think you’ll agree it’s largely because you’ve been to other countries and observed first hand.

As most of you will know, SCNZ holds an annual conference. The location is always different; this year it was in Waitangi. The conference next year will be 5 - 7 April, and will be held in Wellington. This is going to be the big one – it’s the 50th anniversary of the founding of the movement by President Dwight D Eisenhower, it’s the 25th anniversary of the first sister city link between our countries (Guilin and Hastings), it’s the 25th anniversary of the founding of SCNZ, and it’s being held in our capital city – and the theme of the conference will be New Zealand/China sister city relationships. The name of the conference will be Capitalizing on the Gains. I think I can confidently predict it should be the biggest sister cities conference ever held in this country. Wellington plan on having a website up and running within the next few weeks; rest assured all your branches will be notified quickly of that address. SCNZ will be encouraging all our cities with sister city links in China to have their Chinese sister city bring a contingent to this conference, and maybe visit your city afterwards. And of course we will be encouraging Chinese cities which do not have a New Zealand sister city at the moment to be there as well. Likewise SCNZ would encourage all branches of the NZCFS to send delegates to this important conference; this is the ideal opportunity for you to meet with your Chinese friends. We all know the huge value of being able to network at conferences.

One of the things about New Zealand-China relations that always fascinates me is how quickly, and how well Kiwis and Chinese click. I know that’s not just my imagination because it’s something I’ve discussed with many Chinese interpreters, guides, officials etc. We seem to laugh at the same things, and of course laughter is a great communicator.

So what does all this bring us to then? The world is shrinking, the term City State is being used more and more, and with good reason. As cultures come into contact more and more, putting pressure on levels of tolerance and understanding, in the interests of global peace and goodwill, we need to ensure we are prepared to do all we can to meet that challenge. That’s where the NZCFS and SCNZ can play such valuable roles; and hey, isn’t it fun? isn’t it rewarding and enriching? Let’s do it for the world’s future!

Xie xie.


Dave Adamson
Vice President
Sister Cities New Zealand
03 941 8775dave.adamson@ccc.govt.nz