VZCZCXRO8358
RR RUEHCN RUEHVC
DE RUEHGH #0209/01 1270820
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 070820Z MAY 09
FM AMCONSUL SHANGHAI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 7921
INFO RUEHOO/CHINA POSTS COLLECTIVE
RHMFISS/DEPT OF ENERGY WASHINGTON DC
RULSDMK/DEPT OF TRANSPORTATION WASHINGTON DC
RUCPDOC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHINGTON DC
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHINGTON DC
RUEHGH/AMCONSUL SHANGHAI 8566

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 SHANGHAI 000209 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE ALSO PASS USTR FOR WINTER, ALTBACH 
STATE ALSO FOR CA/VO 
USDOC FOR ITA DAS KASOFF, MAC/OCEA-SZYMANSKI 
USDOC ALSO PASS USPTO FOR WU 
USDOE FOR INTERNATIONAL/PUMPHREY AND GEBERT 
STATE PASS NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION CHAN/KAFAFI/HUBER 
TREASURY FOR OASIA - HAARSAGER, WINSHIP 
TRANSPORTATION FOR OST X-1, X-40 
DOT FOR OFFICE OF INTL AVIATION 
DOT FOR FRA/RDV 
EMBASSY BEIJING ALSO FOR PAS, MARY KAY CARLSON 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV ECON ELTN CVIS TPHY SENV SCUL KIPR CH
SUBJECT: HEFEI OFFICIALS PAINT OPTIMISTIC PICTURE OF PROGRESS IN 
LEAST AFFLUENT PART OF CONSULAR DISTRICT 
 
SHANGHAI 00000209  001.2 OF 004 
 
 
¶1.  (U)  Summary.  As part of Consulate efforts to scale up 
outreach to Anhui Province, the least affluent part of our 
consular district, the Consul General and Pol/Econ chief visited 
the provincial capital of Hefei April 8-9.   During the visit, 
the Consul General met with Governor Wang Sanyun and Provincial 
Foreign Affairs Office officials and raised IPR concerns with 
the Hefei Mayor and municipal investment promotion officials. 
The Governor and Provincial Tourism Bureau officials noted hopes 
for increased tourism to Anhui from the 2010 Shanghai Expo; 
environmental officials detailed progress on water quality 
issues, and education officials admitted that recruitment and 
retention of qualified teachers remains a serious challenge in 
the Anhui countryside.  The CG also spoke to students at Anhui 
University and visited the Anhui Children's Welfare Institute 
and the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Plasma Physics 
(IPP).  Septels will report on Deputy Principal Officer's Hefei 
meetings and activities in late April.  End summary. 
 
 
Governor:  Building Infrastructure for Better Tomorrow 
 
---------------------------------- ------------------- 
 
 
 
¶2.  (U)  The Consul General, Pol/Econ Chief and Consulate 
interpreter visited Hefei April 8-9.  Governor Wang Sanyun 
painted reasons for economic optimism in Anhui, saying that 
China's economic stimulus plans will bring another 3,400 
kilometers of rail lines - all high-speed - to the province over 
the next several years, with electrification upgrades planned 
for another 1400 kilometers of existing rail lines. 
Hefei-to-Beijing travel will be less than three hours by rail 
within three years.  A new international airport for Hefei has 
broken ground in a western suburb, and should be operational in 
¶2011.  Anhui has lagged its neighbors in economic growth for 
many years, the Governor noted, but a new period of opening up 
for Anhui has dawned, and the prospect of resolving 
transportation bottlenecks through expansion of rails and 
improvements to waterways and roads means Anhui can overtake its 
neighbors and promote regional economic integration and 
globalization. 
 
 
¶3.  Anhui shipped 10 billion kilograms of grains to other parts 
of China in 2008, Wang boasted, and the leading provincial 
industries of construction materials and cement should fare well 
under the economic stimulus plans.  Natural resources - scenic 
mountains, coal and limestone - and abundant labor, strong 
engineering talent emerging from universities and national-level 
research institutes, and development of tourism, amusement parks 
and a nascent cartoon industry mean bright future prospects for 
Anhui.  First-quarter economic data had already shown signs of 
an economic rebound, with provincial power generation climbing 
15.6 percent and power consumption growing 7.7 percent.  (Note: 
Anhui was one of the provinces hit hard by January-February 2008 
snowstorms, which inter alia damaged the electricity 
distribution network.  End note.)  First-quarter fiscal revenue 
had climbed about six percent year-on-year, while industrial 
output had climbed more than 17 percent. 
 
 
Hefei Mayor:  Welcome More U.S. Investment, IPR Important 
 
------------------------------------------ -------------- 
 
 
 
¶4.  (U)  Hefei Mayor Wu Cunrong noted that the rail improvements 
will connect Hefei and Shanghai in two hours travel time 25 
times per day by August 2010.  The Mayor expressed particular 
hope for additional U.S. business and U.S. Government activities 
in Hefei and the province on environmental protection, cultural 
activities and scientific and technological undertakings.  Anhui 
companies represent an important market for energy efficiency 
 
SHANGHAI 00000209  002.2 OF 004 
 
 
technologies from abroad. 
 
 
¶5.  The Mayor quickly and enthusiastically endorsed our 
recommendation that Hefei or the province should publish a White 
Paper on intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and 
enforcement as part of efforts to attract new foreign direct 
investment and protect the legitimate interests of the more than 
3000 foreign-invested enterprises already in Hefei.  He 
instructed Hefei Investment Promotion Bureau Director Mr. Lan 
Tian to make follow-up inquiries to relevant local offices about 
early preparation of an IPR White Paper. 
 
 
 
Tourism Potential Recognized 
 
---------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶6.  (U)  Anhui Provincial Tourism Deputy Director General Zhang 
Xueping outlined plans to promote more `green tourism' to 
Anhui's scenic mountain areas and ancient villages; `red 
tourism' to sites associated with the Communist Party's rise to 
power, and `blue tourism' to Anhui's lakes and rivers (including 
more tourism along the Yangtze River and connecting to 
destinations in neighboring jurisdictions).  Tourism officials 
are working with local tour operators and the hotel and 
hospitality industries to also develop rural tourism 
(bed-and-breakfast on farms, pick your own produce) and even 
tourism, especially by student groups, to industrial sites such 
as advanced or historic factories. 
 
 
¶7.  Thrice-weekly flights between Hefei and Seoul were  launched 
in March 2009 to bring businesspersons and tourists from South 
Korea to Anhui;  the province hopes to someday land flights from 
European cities as well.  Tourism has become a pillar industry 
for Anhui, providing 8.3 percent of the province's GDP in 2008. 
The Tourism Bureau has an ambitious target for attracting a 
substantially increased number of tourists to Anhui during the 
Shanghai 2010 Expo (May 1 - October 31, 2010), although final 
details of cooperative tourism promotion are still being worked 
out with the Shanghai Tourism Bureau. 
 
 
Teacher Supply a Continuing Challenge, However 
 
--------------------------- ------------------ 
 
 
 
¶8.  (U)  Anhui Provincial Education Department Director-General 
Cheng Yi, a former university mathematics professor, noted that 
Anhui suffers from a chronic shortage of teachers for grades 
1-9.  The shortage is uneven within the province, with some 
small remote villages having only one teacher for all grades, 
far too few teachers in the more populous countryside in 
northern Anhui, and a better situation in most cities.  The 
Central Government and local communities are providing salary 
subsidies to recruit more college graduates to teach in 
villages, an expansion of a successful program already 
undertaken in western China for three years and now expanded to 
Anhui and other central China provinces. 
 
 
¶9.  The global financial crisis and difficulties in job 
placement may prove a boon to hiring more qualified teachers in 
the short term, DG Cheng hopes.  Even so, 3-5 years of hiring 
more and better quality teachers will be required for Anhui to 
get its compulsory education system more regularized.  Higher 
teacher salaries (a responsibility of local governments) are the 
key to resolving the quantity and quality of teachers. 
 
 
SHANGHAI 00000209  003.2 OF 004 
 
 
 
¶10.  (U)  Two million of Anhui's nine million students are sons 
and daughters of migrant worker parents who spend most or all of 
the year in other provinces in China.  Those left behind are 
usually cared for by grandparents, too often without sufficient 
family reinforcement of the importance of education, Cheng said. 
 Some unemployed returned migrant workers have brought their 
children back with them to Anhui, leading to new challenges 
about reintegrating children into local schools.  Even before 
the economic downturn, expenditure of RMB 2.1 billion was 
planned over a two-year period to rebuild many primary schools 
in Anhui, with the quality of school construction guaranteed. 
Anhui is keen on developing more English instruction programs 
for schoolchildren and on expanding cooperation projects with 
U.S. educational institutions. 
 
 
Water Quality an Urgent Challenge 
 
--------------------------------- 
¶11.  (U)  The CG also called on the Provincial Environmental 
Protection Bureau.  Chief Engineer Zhang Zhiyuan said water 
quality is the most urgent pollution problem facing Anhui, but 
numerous wastewater treatment plants are under construction and 
important progress has been made in reducing pollution 
discharges.  Indeed, the goal of new pollution control efforts 
is to prevent future pollution, especially treatment of 
industrial and urban domestic wastewater, not on remediating 
extant pollution problems. 
 
 
 
 
 
¶12.  (U)  In a province that still has 26 percent forest cover, 
ten Anhui cities score worrisome marks for the incidence of acid 
rain, some of which is caused by locally-emitted pollutants and 
some by pollutants blown in from elsewhere.  Perfection of the 
`local government responsibility evaluation system' (i.e., 
making promotion of government officials and Communist Party 
cadre more dependent on meeting environmental protection work 
requirements) will be a crucial factor in meeting environmental 
protection goals.  Continuing public education on the concept of 
environmental protection is another important step in moving 
from today's situation to better environmental quality in the 
future.  Chief Engineer Zhang noted that even in Anhui, people 
are demanding environmental quality improvements for the welfare 
of the people. 
 
 
Tokamak:  What Bilateral Scientific Cooperation Can Be 
 
--------------------------------------------- --------- 
 
 
 
¶13.  (U)  Institute of Plasma Physics (IPP) Director Professor 
Li Jiangang led the CG on a tour of the Experimental Advanced 
Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) research fusion reactor outside 
Hefei.  Chinese scientists at this major research institute (460 
staff, 100 contractors, about 500 Masters and Ph.D. students 
now) have been collaborating with U.S. scientists since 1982, 
including with the University of Texas at Austin, the Princeton 
Plasma Lab, UCLA, UC-San Diego, and General Atomic of San Diego. 
 Cutting edge research there could lead to an operational fusion 
reactor in another 30 - 50 years, Professor Li estimated. 
 
 
¶14.  (SBU)  Modern telecommunications allows remote monitoring 
and control of tokamak experiments around the clock by three 
shifts, one in Anhui, another in Europe and one in the United 
States.  However, this extensive record of productive high-level 
bilateral scientific collaboration is dimmed, Li said, by the 
unpredictable and lengthy administrative processing times (i.e., 
stateside multiagency processing of Security Advisory Opinions) 
 
SHANGHAI 00000209  004.2 OF 004 
 
 
for the visas that IPP scientists and staff need to meet their 
scientific partners or to attend scientific conferences in the 
United States.  As an example, Li told us that he had applied on 
February 9 for a U.S. nonimmigrant visa to attend a March 12 
meeting in the United States; as of April 9 his application was 
still awaiting a Washington reply. 
 
 
Students and Orphans 
 
-------------------- 
 
 
 
¶15.  (U)  The CG spoke at Anhui University about the changes 
seen in the U.S.-China relationship since diplomatic relations 
were normalized in 1979.  480 enthusiastic students listened 
raptly and embraced the opportunity to pose questions about the 
economic downturn, U.S. perceptions of human rights in China, 
employment prospects for their stateside peers, and how soon 
President Obama might visit China. 
 
 
¶16.  (U)  We also visited the Anhui Children's Welfare 
Institute, home to about 500 orphans, about 90 percent of whom 
have mental or physical challenges.  This orphanage is an 
important source of orphans placed in domestic and international 
adoptions, including to the United States; and the orphanage 
receives important financial assistance from the 
California-based `Half the Sky Foundation'.  The visit was an 
opportunity to underscore the benefits of people-to-people 
engagement and the constructive role U.S. NGOs can play in 
China.  Many preschool orphans greeted us warmly, while grade 
school orphans were returning from the local elementary school 
and getting to work on that day's homework. 
 
 
Comment 
 
------- 
 
 
 
¶17.  (U)  Anhui is home to some of China's most spectacular 
scenery (Huangshan National Park) and remote impoverished 
communities, and a provider of millions of migrant workers to 
other parts of China. The province also boasts important 
automotive industries, cultural and performing arts, and the 
ancestral homes of several current and past top members of the 
Communist Party of China.  The recognized need for improved 
environmental protection and the eagerness for increased 
engagement with the United States in business and investment, 
education, pollution control and other sectors make Anhui a rich 
target for increased Consulate outreach and reporting travel. 
Consulate is forming a dedicated transformational diplomacy team 
focused on Anhui to structure and guide that increased outreach. 
CAMP