Tauranga Intermediate students Takiri Mai Te Ata Reweti, 12, Hohua Ngatai, 12, Aidan Pratt, 12, and Waimirirangi Slimin, 12 as well as their teacher Jack Te Moana, will accompany a mayoral-led business delegation to China next week.
Tauranga mayor Greg Brownless will lead his first delegation to Tauranga's sister city in China next week.
Trip organiser Greg Simmonds, the chief operating officer of economic development agency Priority One, said 24 people would spend 10 days in China and visit three cities.
They will arrive in Beijing on April 3 and visit Beijing, sister city Yan Tai and Shanghai before returning to New Zealand on April 12.
Promoting Tauranga exporters and the city as a destination for international students, rugby players and coastal science were the four main aims of the trip, Simmonds said.
In Beijing they will host a Tauranga showcase event for education agents, potential trade partners and investors, and the like, he said.
Simmonds said Brownless would be the only person from Tauranga City Council and the mayor's main role was to "add weight" to the other presentations, as mayors were highly respected in China.
Tauranga mayor Greg Brownless. File photo
Other delegates included Anne Young from Education Tauranga and Mike Rogers from the Bay of Plenty Rugby Union, which has been developing a relationship with China's rugby union to bring players to Tauranga to train.
Export business owner Helen Faulkner - owner of skincare company HZP+Co - would be going, as well as Joanna Hall from ExportNZ Bay of Plenty, representing the interests of other Bay exporters.
Tauranga Intermediate School will send Jack Te Moana, head of the Maori department, and four Year 8 students for the Yantai and Shanghai legs of the trip. They will give cultural performances at various occasions.
Te Moana said the school had a special relationship with China, and had hosted many delegations on the school marae.
Simmonds said each group was paying its own way.
Greg Simmonds, chief operating officer of Priority One. Photo/supplied
The last mayoral delegation was led by Stuart Crosby in 2016 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Tauranga's sister city relationship with Yantai.
Brownless was not concerned a presentation to the council about organ harvesting in China - an official record of which a councillor Unsuccessfully sought to edit so as not to offend the Chinese - would be an issue on the trip.
"I think it just shows we do things in an open way."
Brownless said he was paying out of his own pocket to take his Mandarin-speaking wife Li-Jong Liao on the trip, and to go a few days early so he could settle in before the official itinerary began.
Brownless said that while he had nothing against people flying business class for work - an issue that plagued Auckland's council recently - he was flying economy class.
- Leave New Zealand on April 2 - Arrive in Beijing on April 3 - Three days in Beijing - Four days in Yantai - Two days in Shanghai - Return to New Zealand on April 12.
