Sister Cities Need Diplomacy at Both Ends of the Journey

Summary

---

SISTER CITY arrangements are a bit like religion -- you either believe or you don't. Studying a print-out of the cultural and economic benefits of all this sisterliness is like studying the Shroud of Turin: you see what you want to see and dismiss everything else. Councillor Sherril George calls the New Plymouth District Council forays on the international stage a waste of time and money. She is not the first councillor to question the value of overseas tours, but most of her predecessors have been won over when they got a grip on the full story and airline tickets. If travel broadens the mind, free travel positively explodes the horizon. However, the chances of perennial party-pooper Ms George, firstly, being invited on a junket and, secondly, accepting are about as remote as the possibility of the NPDC resurrecting its pioneering diplomacy in Taiwan. These jaunts, as amateur as they might be, are no place for a bull in a China shop. As in the People's Republic of, not the island breakaway known as the plain Republic of. Nobody, please, mention the war, much less the existence of Taiwan.

And that little oops at the 2003 International Sister Cities Convention in Masterton, when the large Chinese delegation was locked out because Kiwis feared someone might have Sars, has been swept under the Tibetan rug. These days it's China or bust, with fingers crossed that New Plymouth's Japanese sister, Mishima, does not take umbrage at the double-dipping with China's Kunming, due for a family reunion in August to which Mishima has not been invited -- or triple-dipping if New Plymouth's friendship with Fangshan is counted. (Has anyone heard from Fangshan recently?) At least Ms George need not worry, for the moment, about all the world's 68 Plymouths that were invited to party here -- including great- grandmother Plymouth in Devon, England. It was cancelled when it was discovered that most of them were little hamlets in remote valleys without international relations committees and travel budgets, unlike New Plymouth in Taranaki, New Zealand.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Sister Cities Need Diplomacy at Both Ends of the Journey

Both the doubting councillor and her believing may...

See the full content of this document

---