Black recalls experience in China

It’s well known that China has a ton of people in their country, and their economy is doing well.

For Timmins Mayor Steve Black, he got to experience that all first hand in his recent trip to the country last week, as part of a delegation of Ontario Mayors.

The delegation met with any Chinese investors, looking to put money overseas to help their country become even bigger.

“China’s growing pretty fast in population and economic development, so I think there’s a lot of opportunities,” he said, “I believe they’re our second to highest trading partner, right in behind the United States in a global-national standpoint so there’s definitely a lot of economic activity there and we had some good discussions.”

He says from here, we just have to wait and see what these discussions have produced.

Black adds the Mayors in China have a bit more power than in Canada.

“They don’t go to council for discussion and votes,” he said, “The Mayor in China kind of runs the city, including the hospital and several other facilities that we don’t get involved with here in Canada through a municipal standpoint so they’re pretty influential people.”

He adds they’re looking to spread their wealth around the world, and investing in different countries to provide a balanced portfolio.

Throughout the nine-day trip, Black was able to visit cities like Beijing and Shanghai.  He says in Shanghai, traffic really stands out.

“It definitely blows anything we see here in Canada away in terms of issues and congestion and even the city of Toronto think they’re almost in paradise if they seen the Shanghai traffic and some of the things they have to deal with over there.”

In terms of economic development, Black says it’s a little more unbelievable.

“They probably have more cranes and construction going on in Shanghai than we have in most of the country combined,” he said.

“They want Shanghai to be the financial capital of the world going forward and looks like they’re prepared to invest the money and the infrastructure required to get it there.”