Op Eds & Articles
Mr. Avraham Nir is the newly appointed Consul General to Israel’s Consulate in Guangzhou, China, which was opened in March, 2009. Prior to this post, Mr. Nir also served in Beijing, Shanghai, Thailand, Nepal and Vietnam.
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Q. Why did Israel decide to open a consulate in Guangzhou?
The Consulate General of Israel in Guangzhou will enhance the cooperation between Israel and the four important provinces of South-East China: Guangdong, Fujian, Guangxi and Hainan. These provinces stretch over 600,000 square km and populate about 220 million people. The area includes two cities leading China in GDP per capita – Shenzhen and Guangzhou – and other major cities, such as Xiamen and Nanning.
The area includes the Pearl River Delta, an area dubbed as the economic powerhouse of China. It is an area where the Chinese economic reforms began 30 years ago, and which today faces a new economic revolution that will change the nature of economic activity from traditional and polluting, based on cheap labor and low added value, to one based on advanced technology, R&D and environment-friendly technologies.
Q. What would you say is Israel’s value added given its tiny size and geographical distance from Guangdong?
Indeed the distance is great, but it is precisely here that our importance as an official delegation comes to the fore – in our ability to assist in locating the fields in which Israeli knowledge and expertise are most relevant, and in opening the right doors.
As far as Israel is concerned, there could not be a better time to open the Guangzhou delegation. The transformation components facing the Pearl River Delta are bound to stress the relevance of cooperation with us. The focus on R&D and environment-friendly hi-tech is Israel’s forte. Both sides could benefit immensely if we succeed in institutionalizing joint R&D and real solution-finding partnerships that include assimilation of Israeli technological solutions in Chinese products.
A good example could be the telecoms field, a field in which Israel does not produce the finalized product, yet develops innovative technologies for mobile phones. The area in which the consulate operates is the world’s number one mobile phone manufacturer, and the cooperation between us could provide the Chinese companies with the extra value that would place them on the front tier with competing international companies, and the Israeli companies with a huge slice of the global market.
Q. You are known to be pushing clean-tech industries. Just how receptive is China?
Despite, and maybe because of, the well known image circulated in the western media regarding the severe environmental situation in China, we are now witnessing a monumental and sincere Chinese effort to change the current situation. The efforts are latitudinal and encompass a wide variety of fields: a gradual shutdown of polluting factories, a shift to environment-friendly technologies, sincere attempts to amend mistakes of the past, and not least important – the education of the future generations, through various activities, on the importance of environmental preservation.
This is not a simple task, with efforts that will not culminate in fast solutions, yet the decision has been made and China has proved in the past that when a decision is made, it is followed up on, no matter the time or cost involved.
Q. Do you have a tourism mandate at all – attracting Chinese visitors to Israel? If so, how are you competing with all the other closer destinations to China?
The issue of tourism is indeed high on our priority list. Of course the challenge is not a simple one, but we believe that through gradual and thorough work, by all the relevant Israeli organizations, in China and in Israel, we can place Israel as a destination for Chinese tourists.
The numbers today are extremely low, only a few thousand Chinese visit Israel annually. But the fact that 40% of the outgoing tourism from China originates in the Pearl River Delta region suggests that the potential is there and we will not spare any effort on this issue.
Q. Are your goals quantifiable? If so, what are they?
Not all our efforts are measurable. A large part of our efforts focus on creating the right atmosphere that can encourage the intensification of cooperation between the relevant and potential factors in the two countries, and on widening the exposure to Israel and its capabilities in order to impress upon governmental and business leaders the attractiveness of Israel as a means to their end.
However, every city and province within our jurisdiction can measure the economic interaction they have with Israel. Guangdong alone is responsible for a quarter of the mutual trade between Israel and China. Any change in this data could provide us with a clue as to whether a change has taken place in the fields we chose to focus on. In addition, success on specific projects can always be measured in real-time.
Q. Any additional comments?
I would like to thank the Israel-Asia Center for giving me this stage and I hope that the members of the Center will look upon the Consulate as a real partner in advancing cooperation with China’s South-East. We’re happy to assist.
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