Cai Yingbo, Newman Huo

MAYOR Xu Zongheng’s government work report received high praise from 46 foreign guests attending the Fifth Session of the Fourth Shenzhen Municipal People’s Congress (MPC) at the Citizens’ Center Thursday.

The foreign guests included 18 consular officials from 12 countries, including Finland, Switzerland, France, Canada, the United States, South Africa, South Korea, Singapore and Russia. The other 28 were foreign experts in different fields who were representing the expatriate community.

After listening to the city government report, David Bostwick, consul and senior trade commissioner of the Canadian consulate in Guangzhou, said it was great that the Shenzhen government would focus on such important issues as migrant workers, the gap between the wealthy and poor and social warfare.

“Shenzhen has been a leader in the country’s opening up and economic reforms over the past thee decades, but today it is good to see that the city will take the lead in China narrowing the gap between the wealthy and poor and trying to provide more social welfare for its residents,” said Bostwick.

“We benefit a lot from the mayor’s report. It helps us know Shenzhen’s plans in different fields and it will surely help cooperation between Russia and China, especially Shenzhen,” said Viktor L. Pashkov, Russian deputy consul general in Guangzhou.

Hannu Toivola, Finnish consul general in Guangzhou, highly praised the Shenzhen government for making an English version of the government work report available to foreign observers.

“I attended the Guangdong provincial people’s congress at the beginning of this year, but the problem was that the provincial government work report was in Chinese only,” Toivola said.

“My interpreters translated only part of the long report at the Guangdong session, so I just got some figures but could not understand the whole text,” he said.

“I really appreciate Shenzhen giving us an English version so that we know what is in the report,” he said.

This was the first time Vika M. Khuamalo of the South African consulate in Shanghai had attended the session.

“I’ve been working in Shanghai for three years and have often visited Shenzhen. I was honored to be invited to such an important event,” Khuamalo said.

Britt Brantley, director of QSI International School of Shekou, said the report showed the government was strongly committed to economic development and he was interested in what the government would do to develop international education this year.