FOCUS ON TRADE, TECH AND STUDY ON ASIA TRIP
NEW theme park rides and adding thousands of new international students to the Gold Coast’s population are on the agenda as the mayor spruiks the city in Asia.
Mayor Tom Tate arrived in Taiwan yesterday for a weeklong mayoral mission which will take him to Chengdu in mainland China and Thailand.
Speaking to the Bulletin from Taipei, Cr Tate said he was confident of boosting the city’s tourism numbers, as well as securing greater investment in the health and knowledge precinct.
In Taipei Cr Tate will:
• Meet the Mayor of Taipei who wants to send an athletics team to Gold Coast Marathon.
• Spruik the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct to Top 12 Taiwanese biotech firms
• Meet with Brogent Technologies, the company behind Dreamworld’s newest ride, which will open in December.
• Presenting the city to Taiwan’s top 10 education providers to try to boost tertiary student numbers.
Cr Tate said the student numbers on the Coast could increase.
“We currently have 4000 from that region while our total tertiary international numbers are as high as 29,000,” he said. “We would like at least 2000 more Taiwanese students to move to the Coast to study.”
While in Taipei, Cr Tate will also meet officials from Cutting Edge, a software firm which supplied Oxenford’s Village Roadshow Studios with millions of dollars’ worth of post film production equipment.
Councillors voted to fund the mayor’s travel but Cr Tate is privately funding the travel and accommodation of Mayoress Ruth Tate. The Mayor will fly to China tomorrow where he will also discuss the health and knowledge precinct. Chengdu is tipped to become our next sister city, within a year.