Grant Award View - GA18307

This project aims to showcase how Australian cities and regions can derive economic, cultural and educational benefits from ‘sister-city’ relationships with China through a survey and six in-depth case studies.

Australian local governments have played a pivotal role in establishing 83 sister-city relationships with China over the last 40 years. Despite the potential benefits of such relationships to their local communities and businesses, little is known about the benefits and level of exchange these relationships have generated. To foster long-term sister-city relationships, it is important to identify current challenges, best practice strategies and capability development of city councils through systematic investigation.

The first stage of this project will survey Australian city councils that have Chinese sister-city agreements to gauge the challenges, engagement and benefits of these relationships. In the second stage, we will undertake six case studies of successful relationships to identify best practice approaches of city councils.