Chinese city of Shanghai, Victoria renew cooperation on friendly exchanges |14 September 2019
Ms Yin and Mayor Andre exchange documents after signing the agreement
Exciting exchanges and more cooperation in various fields between the Chinese city of Shanghai and Victoria lie ahead now that the very big city and very small town have renewed their cooperation agreement on friendly exchanges.
The signing of the agreement took place yesterday morning between the Mayor of Victoria David Andre and Yicui Yin, chairperson of the Standing Committee of Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress who is heading a high-level delegation from the Chinese city to Seychelles this week at the invitation of Mayor Andre.
Following the signing of the agreement, Ms Yin and Mayor Andre exchanged gifts and souvenirs and Ms Yin also handed over a gift of Seychelles national flags in various sizes to Mayor Andre to be used to decorate Victoria on forthcoming celebrations.
Addressing the delegation Mayor Andre said such sister city agreement is very important to connect people. He went on to note that the world is getting very small and it is therefore very important that people around the world get to know each other and develop friendship and share experiences, learn together and from each other with the aim of making this world a better place which is up to us human beings to do that.
Mayor Andre noted that under the agreement there are numerous areas that Victoria is looking forward to promote through its renewed cooperation with Shanghai namely business and trade development, cultural exchanges. But he further stated that the most important thing remains how to boost sharing of human experiences between our two peoples.
“The most important thing in such cooperation is to explore ways to better consolidate people to people exchanges,” Mayor Andre pointed out.
He went on to describe the already existing relations between Shanghai and Victoria in general as excellent, noting that various exchange visits have been carried out since the signing of the first agreement between the city and the town on October 31, 2013.
But Mayor Andre expressed our country’s desire to see more visitors from Shanghai visit Seychelles and why not spend their honeymoon here.
He has extended an invitation to the delegation and the city of Shanghai to take part in the 250th anniversary of the first settlers arrival in Seychelles and to assist us in anyway possible to make the celebration a success.
Mayor Andre assured the delegation that Victoria is really looking forward to some really exciting exchanges with Shanghai.
For her part Ms Yin went on to emphasise the importance of people to people contacts and connections.
“The world is a very small globe indeed. You live here, we live over there but when we are connected we become a global village,” she remarked.
She went on to highlight that exchanges between Victoria and Shanghai intensified following the twinning agreement in 2013 and she applauded the fact that since then the two cities have accomplished a lot including Seychelles setting up of a consulate in Shanghai and the number of Chinese visitors here has increased to reach over 10,000 during the past year.
Ms Yin has congratulated Seychelles on the milestone celebration next year and promised that Shanghai will take part in the celebrations.
During its visit here the delegation held different meetings with various high-level government officials to discuss potential areas of cooperation between Shanghai and Seychelles.
They also discussed possible cooperation between the SBC and the Shanghai Media group.
