A delegation from Snohomish County in the U.S. State of Washington visited Tainan City Hall on October 14th. Snohomish and Tainan have a sister-city relationship, and the main purpose of the visit was to discuss and explore possibilities for cooperation in the development of renewable energy technology, as an area in which both possess significant strength.
The Snohomish delegation was led by Ms. Kendee Yamaguchi, Executive Director of the county government’s Trade and Business Development Sector, and was composed of members of the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle. It was warmly received by Tainan’s Deputy Mayor, Mr. Yen Chun-tso, together with Deputy Secretary-General Liu Shih-chung, Department of Information and International Relations Director Hsu Shu-fen, and Economic Development Bureau Deputy Director Stanly Yin.
In his welcoming remarks on behalf of Tainan City Government, Deputy Mayor Yen noted that Tainan and Snohomish have much in common, both nestling between mountains and sea, and both possessing rich natural resources. Each has also been through a period of industrial diversification, transformation and upgrading in recent decades, during which they have emerged as strongholds of development in green energy technology.
The deputy mayor further remarked that, since the merger of Tainan City and Tainan County in 2011, its aggregation of industrial, cultural, natural and other resources had given Tainan sufficient attributes to qualify as an international city. In recent years, the city had been gearing to develop as a low-carbon sustainable city of technology, and was now setting sights on achieving the central government’s policy goal of establishing a Renewable Energy R&D Center in Shalun. He hoped that, given their complementary advantages and shared development visions, Tainan and Snohomish would be able to pursue broad and substantive exchanges, to open up new opportunities for economic and trade cooperation and for their respective industrial development.
Ms. Yamaguchi expressed gratitude to Tainan for her delegation’s warm reception, and remarked that she had found many similarities between Tainan and Snohomish. Both, she said, were actively developing their renewable energy and biotech industries, and both were major agricultural production centers. She conveyed a message of greeting from County Executive Dave Somer, and hoped the sister cities would be able to connect more closely in the future and broaden their collaborative ties.
The Snohomish County delegation visited Tainan as part of a trip to attend Taiwan’s National Day celebrations and the Taiwan International Green Industry Show. While in Tainan, the delegation also made a visit to the Taiwan Green Technology Industry Alliance, as arranged by the city government’s Economic Development Bureau.