PH City wants sisterhood relations with Xiamen City in China

• Source: http://www.update.ph/2016/11/ph-city-wants-sisterhood-relations-with-xiamen-city-in-china/11015
• Tuesday, November 15, 2016

(PNA)

A city councilor in Dagupan City called for the establishment of sisterhood relations between Xiamen City in China and Dagupan to further enhance the now strengthened relationship between the Philippines and China after the state visit to the foreign country by President Rodrigo Duterte.

In his resolution passed by the city council today, Councilor Jose Netu Tamayo earnestly requested Mayor Belen T. Fernandez to initiate the creation of a committee that will undertake the initial spadework leading to the establishment of sisterhood relationship between Xiamen and Dagupan.

Xiamen, he said, is a prosperous city in Southern China, where many Filipino-Chinese presently living in Dagupan, including Mayor Fernandez and Vice Mayor Brian Lim, trace their roots.

He explained his resolution stemmed from the initiative undertaken by President Duterte in seeking improved relations between the Philippines, which was somewhat soured due to the occupation by China of the Spratlys and the Scarborough or Panatag Shoal, which is only 200 nautical miles away from Pangasinan.

“In Davao City, where President Duterte was mayor for more than 20 years, it already extended its hands of friendship and cooperation with Shanghai City in China,” Tamayo noted.

“We talk among ourselves in the city council as we want to duplicate this feat since the trend nowadays is to establish a bridge of friendship between China and the Philippines,” Tamayo added.

“We believe that there is nothing more emphatic than to cement the relationship between China and the Philippines through a sisterhood agreement between Dagupan and Xiamen,” he said.

He asked newsmen: “Why Xiamen?”

“Xiamen is where most of Filipino-Chinese from Dagupan traced their roots. That is where most of our Filipino-Chinese brothers in Dagupan came from,” Tamayo explained.

He said the most of the ancestors of the present Filipino-Chinese in Dagupan came to the city by boats when they fled China, through Xiamen, during the Chinese revolution that drove away the nationalists and installed communist power to that country.

“As a matter of fact, the roots of the mayor (Belen Fernandez) and the vice mayor (Brian Lim) came from the same place,” he added.

He also learned that some of the city officials of Xiamen City are related to some of the Filipino-Chinese residents of Dagupan, pointing out that this could be exploited to the hilt to bring more investments to the city and foster more frequent exchanges of culture, education and technologies between the two cities.