Hengyang Mayor Zhu Jian recently signed a letter of intent on establishing a friendship city tie with Augustin Thiam, governor of the Yamoussoukro Autonomous District of Côte d'ivoire. This laid a solid foundation for the formal establishment of the friendship city relations between the two cities.

Knotting the friendship city tie with Yamoussoukro is Hengyang government’s concrete action to implement the Belt and Road Initiative and the eight major initiatives of China-Africa cooperation, put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping. 
In 2019, a Hengyang government delegation visited Yamoussoukro district as the political capital of Côte d'ivoire. Based on a period of friendly exchanges, the two parties have furthered mutual understanding, and boosted economic and trade cooperation. On June 29, 2019, the TBEA Hengyang Transformer Company contracted with its Ivory Coast client at the China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo in Changsha. In August that year, the company entered into a contract of 240 million EUR with the storage administration authority of Côte d'ivoire, under the support of the provincial and municipal governments.

Hengyang and Yamoussoukro will focus on agricultural, healthcare, and educational cooperation, and promote people-to-people communication and economic and trade exchanges, for mutual benefits and win-win results.

So far, Hengyang has established friendship city tie with 6 international cities, namely Rittoshi of Japan; Podolsk of Russia; Provari of Ukraine; Fuengiola City of Spain; Calarast of Romania; and, Legazpi of the Philippines. It also has reached letters of intent on such ties with 4 foreign cities and districts, including Bobruisk district of Belarus, and Toledo and Guadalajara cities of Spain. 

This article is from Hunan Provincial Government www.enghunan.gov.cn.

Translator: Pang Yuehui 

Chinese source: Office of Foreign Affairs Commission of CPC Hunan Provincial Committee