The sister city agreement with Suqian was signed in November 2013 “to promote people-to-people friendly contacts, and economic and trade interflows” between the two cities. Suqian is in the affluent northern Jiangsu Province and has a population climbing towards 6 million people.
It is one of eastern China’s mega-cities and is well served by modern road, rail and air links. You can reach Shanghai in 6 hours by car or 2.5 hours by high-speed train; Beijing is 11 hours away by car and about 3 hours 40 minutes by high-speed train).
The city is famous for its vocational education, flowers and seedlings, seafood (including whitebait, shrimp and crab) and its large reserves of non-metal minerals. The city is also China’s capital of spirits — it is home to the distillery that produces the Yanghe range, the top-selling spirit in the country.
The city is undergoing rapid economic growth and its emerging industries are grouped in six clusters: opto-electronics, new materials, smart grid, high-performance composite material, biotechnology and information technology. It is achieving this growth while also being described by the United Nations as “a new demonstration city for environmental protection and energy conservation”.
