Foshan hopes to win friends in German health sector

From left: Rong Qiang, deputy secretary-general of Sino-German Industrial City Alliance,  Liu Yi, secretary-general of Sino-German Industrial City Alliance, Zhao Hai, the deputy mayor of Foshan Municipal Government, Lothar de Maiziere, former prime minister of the German Democratic Republic, Friedhelm Ost, former state secretary of Germany, Alexander Wilhelm from Rheinland-Pfalz, and Michael Ebling, mayor of Mainz, present at the global roadshow. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The bio-pharmaceutical industry is one of Foshan's main economic driving forces. It is a hub of Chinese patent medicine, housing the headquarters of Sinopharm Group's modern Chinese medicine division.

The strength of the Chinese medicine industry has led to the formation of the Foshan Biomedical Industrial Park and Guangdong (Nanhai) biomedical industry base, and the area is also a hotbed for the manufacturing of medical devices and the dental health industry.

For these reasons, a partnership with Mainz would make sense. The state capital and largest city in the Rhineland-Palatinate state of Germany, Mainz also has a strong healthcare and biomedicine industrial base, being home to 630 companies employing 19,700 staffmembers, as well as hosting more than 60 research institutes and clinics.

"This is why Foshan chose Mainz as the first stop of the global roadshow,"said the city's mayor Michael Ebling." It would be a great companionship for both cities."

Mainz is also the birthplace for Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the movable-type printing press, and his entrepreneurial spirit lives on in the city's reputation for hosting a huge number of start-ups.

"We are very successful in guiding new ideas from the scientific field of our university to be part of the economy," said Ebling. "Health is a dynamic field with a lot of people working in it already, and, we know, more people working in it in the future."