Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (left) worked closely with R.C. Wu (right), director general of the Taipei office in Atlanta, to make the sister city relationship with Columbus a reality. photo by Phil Bolton

The mayor of a Taiwanese city recently led a delegation to Georgia, where he inked a sister city contract with Columbus, formalizing an already strong cultural relationship between the two cities that officials hope will help grow business ties.

Taichung City, Columbus’ new sister, has for the last five years concentrated on becoming the cultural center of its region, contributing to the $50 billion of investment attracted to the region in the last five years, Mayor Jason Hu told GlobalAtlanta in an interview in Atlanta just before taking a bus to Columbus. 

“Cultural investment does not cost; it pays,” he said. “It boosted the economy. I now have the most prosperous local economy in Taiwan, and I’m making Taichung internationalize.”

Columbus has also been focusing on the need to become more globally minded, according to Hideo Kabumoto, director of international development for the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce.

In 2005, Mr. Kabumoto was approached by R.C. Wu, director general of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Atlanta, who asked whether Columbus had any interest in forging a sister city relationship with Taichung, a city of more than a million people known for its Central Taiwan Science Park and its technologically charged economy.

Following up on that inquiry, Mr. Kabumoto visited Taichung in November 2005 to meet with the mayor.  

Mr. Hu, who told GlobalAtlanta that he spent his first foreign experience in “Dixieland” as a student at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, S.C., expressed interest in linking his city with the American Southeast. 

Mr. Kabumoto also saw the potential for the two cities to grow together.

“I thought (Taichung) was a good match for Columbus because they focus on education, culture, music and keeping their old traditions,” Mr. Kabumoto said. “This is good.  This is what Columbus needs.”

In June of 2006, Mr. Kabumoto returned to Taichung with then-Mayor Bob Poydasheff and Mike Gaymon, president and CEO of the Columbus chamber, both of whom “expressed their eagerness” to build the sister city relationship.

After almost giving up, Mr. Kabumoto finally found the right timing to introduce the agreement to the Columbus City Council and have it signed by Mr. Hu, who on his recent trip met Columbus Mayor Jim Wetherington.

During Mr. Hu’s trip to Columbus, the boisterous yet charismatic former foreign minister of Taiwan visited Columbus State University’s River Center for the Performing Arts, a 240,000-square-foot performance venue that opened in 2004.

Mr. Hu, who is currently building a 2,009-seat opera house in Taichung to be completed in 2009, was very impressed, and he showed off his opera house’s architectural plans to Columbus officials, according to Mr. Kabumoto.

One of Mr. Hu’s other crowning cultural achievements is an amphitheater with the capacity to hold 15,000 visitors.  

He has also built a 20,000-seat baseball stadium that is to host this year’s Baseball World Cup and Asian Games, which he said is expected to attract more than 4,000 spectators from Japan alone.

The Taichung delegation was comprised of a diverse mix of city officials and local musicians.  A string quartet from the Taichung City Symphony Orchestra performed at the city council meeting and at a reception at Chef Lee’s Peking Restaurant in Columbus, Mr. Kabumoto said.

Although Taichung has had a total of 17 sister cities in various countries since 1965, Mr. Hu told GlobalAtlanta that he is not interested in a superficial relationship.

Even before the sister cities relationship solidified, it had already started impacting educational ties.

Frank Brown, the president of Columbus State, told GlobalAtlanta that his university hosted a delegation from Taichung National University just about a month and a half ago, and the two schools signed a very “general, open agreement” showing their desire to move toward establishing exchanges.

“Now that the sister city relationship is official, I think it gives us a little more impetus to work on the university agreement,” said Mr. Brown, who added that Columbus State is looking to host students from Taichung who want to learn about environmental science and urban management. 

Taichung City has won the world championship at the Little League World Series four times—another bond with Columbus, whose Northern Little League brought the world title to Georgia last year.