Mao Siwei, the new Chinese consul general in the city, doesn’t mind his plate getting full with meaty works. In fact many of these he plucked out from elsewhere to put on his plate. To each of them he wants to give his undivided attention if and as chance permits.
For now the job heading the list is to start giving visas to China from Kolkata. Mao feels the demand for the visa could easily touch 50,000 this year from his office. That averages to nearly 140 a day.
According to him, 460,000 Indians traveled to China last year as against just 70,000 coming the opposite way.
This explains why the China Eastern Airlines that began thrice-a-week direct flight to Kunming late last year now plans to make it daily from next month.
Among his other priorities is the plan to culturally connect with 3000-strong Chinese community in the city, the biggest in the country. He’ll also raise the issue of poor civic infrastructure in the eastern fringes where the Chinese mostly live.
Coming later will be 2 more important projects. The first is to build a bigger permanent location at Rajarhat. The other will be to promote Chinese language program in Kolkata in a big way.
Clearly Mao Siwei’s mandate is to facilitate for the long haul. Though Bangalore figured prominently for China to open their third consulate in India, they instead decided to have it in Kolkata for geo-political reasons.
With the Chinese consulate, the city now houses 11 full-fledged diplomatic missions in the city. The others are the US, UK, Russia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
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i being one of 3000-strong Kolkata Chinese community in the city is nice to know that there is a direct flight in kolkata to china.
thank you for the nice information to help me post in the Kolkata Chinese community blog dhapa.com