Mayor Eric Chu and many city mayors attend the Asia Pacific Cities Summit
The New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu was invited to attend the 2013 Asia Pacific Cities Summit in Kaohsiung from 9/9/2013 to 9/11/2013, and during the morning of 9/9/2013 he would attend the grand opening ceremony of Melbourne’s exhibition hall; Melbourne was one of the founding cities of the Summit event. He also highly praised that the positive meanings brought by Kaohsiung which hosted this large international conference.
When Chu attended the ceremony of Melbourne’s hall, he met with the city’s mayor Graham Quirk whom Chu used to visit to exchange city governance experience during his visit to Australia last February. Before leaving for Taiwan, Mayor Graham Quirk specifically indicated that he was looking forward to meeting with Mayor Chu again, and he wanted to invite Mayor Chu to be Melbourne’s exhibition hall’s grand opening’s VIP.
Chu indicated that the New Taipei City was the largest special (Executive-Yuan-governed) municipality in Taiwan, and its civilians all had very high expectations about the city’s urban planning, traffic construction, green energy and social welfare, so the Government faced a great challenge. However, the Summit not only gathered more than 1000 important city leaders and international companies in Asia-pacific regions, but also created an international interaction platform for sharing and learning. After the meeting with Mayor Quirk, Chu gave a Yinge ceramic ornament to Mr. Quirk, and Mr. Quirk gave Chu a commemorative glass plate in return. The two mayors then went together and attended the grand opening of the Summit with more than 100 city mayors and representatives.
For this Summit, not only Chu attended the opening, but also Deputy Mayor Xu Zhijian would attend the closing ceremony on 9/11/2013; moreover, the New Taipei City team, including Housing, Urban and Rural Development Department, Transportation Department, Research, Development, and Evaluation Commission and Secretariat, would all send staff to the Summit to interact with other cities’ representatives.
The Summit was first hosted in Melbourne, Australia in 1996, and it was a very vast international conference held once every two years. For the past 17 years, it had grown into a very important worldwide meeting for Asia-pacific governments’ and businesses’ developments.
Besides that, the 2013 Asia Pacific Cities Summit Mayors and Representatives delegation, consisting of 11 countries which included USA and Canada, would visit Mayor Chu during the morning of 9/12/2013, and the delegation would also visit The Lin Family Mansion and Garden in the New Taipei City. Through the delegation’s visit to the city’s cultural park, the interactions between the city and other international cities could be strengthened.
