Prof. Weise attends 2023 "Charming City Hefei Tour" of the Central Media Interview Team and the Hefei Foreign Expert Research Symposium

: Written by: Thomas Weise; Created: 17 April 2023

Today, on 2023-04-17, I attended the 2023 "Charming City Hefei Tour" of the Central Media Interview Team [2023“魅力城市合肥行”央媒采访团] followed by the Hefei Foreign Expert Research Symposium [合肥市外国专家调研座谈活动] in the Hefei Municipal Government Conference Center [合肥市政府会议中心], together with twelve experts from nine different countries who work in Hefei. The first event was hosted by the Director of Hefei Science and Technology Bureau, Mr. Jin FAN [范进，合肥市科技局局长], who opened it with a short opening introduction. This was followed by a warm welcome speech by Mr. Fei YUAN, Member of the Standing Committee of the Hefei Municipal Committee [袁飞，合肥市委常委], who emphasized on the importance of internationalization and the impressive progress that our city Hefei has made during the past decade. The second speaker was Mrs. Qingqun XU, Chief Editor of "International Talent Exchange" and "Expert Work Newsletter" of the Foreign Talent Research Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology [徐庆群，科技部国外人才研究中心《国际人才交流》《专家工作通讯》总编辑], who had already visited our city with her team back in 2019. She, too, emphasized the importance of international experts. She also praised Hefei for its good work in increasing the internationalization.

In the following two sessions, presided over by Mr. Daqun LIANG, the Director-general of the Hefei Municipal Bureau of Foreign Experts [梁大群，市科技局党组成员、外专局局长], the international experts commented on their experiences in Hefei and noted potential fields of improvements. It was interesting to see that basically all experts, me in included, had nothing but positive words and praise for our city. The general agreement is that life in Hefei and the working conditions are outstanding. Indeed, several experts noted that it is a pity that our city’s achievements and the good environment that it offers are not well-known abroad and recommended that they should be advertised more both at home and abroad. I believe that the meeting was quite successful: All foreign experts were keen to contribute ideas and suggestions (so much that most of us exceeded our allotted talking time) and the governmental representatives were receptive and really appreciated the openness and constructiveness of the comments.