Welcome to The Senate Site

By Senator Curt Bramble
Senate Majority Leader - Blogging from Liaoning, China.

Today we saw exactly what Tom Friedman was talking about. Dalian, a vibrant metropolis on the Liaodong peninsula, is the quintessential "world-is-flat" city. We visited the Dalian High-Tech Industrial Zone, which contains a number of smaller cluster-type parks with various industries, including biotech and pharmaceutical (we're told Myriad Genetics has a Chinese company here, but we didn’t visit it). The park also includes information technology, advanced equipment manufacturing, and other industries. The IT area includes a heavy focus on software; there is even a separate section for a Software Park that we visited today.

Oracle has a facility in the software park, which was farmland until 1998. We visited the facility that handles software support for the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean markets. This facility has about 90 employees and expects to have nearly 300 within two years. Many of these employees are workers from Japan and other places who've decided to make a life in Dalian. Other companies in the software park include HP, Accenture, IBM, Neusoft, Microsoft, and a host of Fortune 500 companies. This area is thriving due in no small part to the 22 universities and 100 plus research institutions located in the Dalian area.

But Dalian isn't all about business. The city is known as "Little Europe" throughout China and serves as a vacation city for many Chinese. You can see the influence of the Russian occupation throughout the city and we've seen European touches, including at least two miniature Eiffel Towers. We had a short visit to the Dalian Natural History Museum and the Tongniu Mountain Panoramic Stand, which gives one an incredible view of the port of Dalian which serves as one of Northern China's premiere seaports. I’ve sent some pictures and we’ll get them posted.

Our spouses have been able to go out and experience much more of the unique culture and beauty of this area (for some inexplicable reason, they have chosen not to join us at some of these meetings). Hopefully, we’ll get one or two of them to describe China from their perspective.

After leaving the mountaintop, we visited the port and saw a very small portion of the more than 200 million tons of cargo shipped out of Dalian into the north Pacific every year. Some of us couldn't help but wonder what products in those containers might be destined for our own homes. Leaving the port, we rode the city's light rail back into town to continue our meetings with government officials, including the Mayor of Dalian and the Chairman of the Dalian People's Congress. Senator Knudson gave a great speech summing up many of our thoughts in his own unique way.

Senator Knudson astutely discussed the myths and realities of Utah culture. He spoke of the unique connection between vibrant areas of high-tech growth and strong research universities and encouraged all participants to build upon the increased understanding between our two countries. He received a standing ovation and entertained us all with his wit. During our meeting with the mayor and other government leaders, we also heard about some of Dalian's other industries and had a few minutes to mingle in one of the many city squares with the people of Dalian.

Our visit to the city square was fascinating. Each night, hundreds of people gather in Zhongshan Square (named in memory of Sun Yat-Sen) to rollerskate, play hackey sack, and dance. The city provides a small speaker system and music plays while the citizens dance, children play, and tourists watch. It's a bustling environment with little sign of tension. Even the hundreds of near misses between cars and pedestrians don't seem to bother anyone.

The federal government can do it’s thing – and I’m glad they do – but when it comes to facilitating local educational exchanges, cultural exchanges, and specific business deals, the very best way to do that is at the person-to-person, or local government to local government level.

Although we realize that China is not without its problems, as we visited the Dalian facilities of Oracle, Pfizer, the Dalian deep-water port (largest in region), their ship-building facility and other companies, it was clear that the China we're seeing in our trip is far from the China suggested by antagonists who would have us turn a blind eye to a fast-developing nation of more than 1.3 billion people. Dalian, with its city squares, business parks, and energetic streets is a city you've got to see to believe.

4 Comments:

 Voice of Utah said...

We'd love to see it--how does one apply for one of these trips? What we really need is to make blogger-to-blogger connections at the local level. What could the Huffington Post or the Drudge Report do that Part of the Plan or Amicus couldn't do just as well? How about it, legislators--set aside a little something in the next session to send local bloggers to China?

7/13/2007 12:12 AM  

 Anonymous said...

How do the Chinese receive the Utah birth rate in comparison to their own? Zhi sheng yige haizi hao : It is good to have just one child (Chinese political slogan).

Viva Chairman Curt

7/13/2007 7:13 AM  

 Alex said...

Voice of Utah:

There are quite a few bloggers in Dalian already. Infact I'm involved in setting up a Dalian collaborative blog about life here - it's a treend which is growing in China, especially in areas like Dalian which may not be served my English media much.

I enjoyed the reporting of the senators' visit. Grass roots experience and understanding of different cultures, and the hurdles they face, is the way forward, for sure.

7/14/2007 7:27 AM  

 RSLFM said...

Thanks for the vivid accounts of the trip so far.

Have you asked the Chinese about free speech issues yet (as you yourself suggested you would when justifying the trip?)

If so, please report.

Thnx,
RSLFM

7/14/2007 1:27 PM  

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