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Sister Relationships
Hubei -Ohio
In 1979, Governor Jim Rhodes made Ohio’s inaugural visit to Hubei Province, China and signed into agreement the sister state relationship.
That visit sparked the beginning of many collaborations between Central Ohio’s businesses and Hubei Province and has helped increase Ohio’s exports to China.
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Diamond Power International, Inc, a Lancaster based supplier of boiler cleaning equipment and ash handling systems now a part of Babcock & Wilcox, established their footprint in Hubei back in 1987.
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Anheuser – Busch, our hometown brewery on the north side of town, opened its first brewery in Wuhan City, capital of Hubei, in 1995, through a joint venture with a local brewery and has produced billions of tons of Budweiser in China ever since.
​Hubei Province is the 9th largest province in China with a population of 61 million people and a GDP of $456 billion.
Like Ohio, Hubei is an important industrial hub, and it has a comprehensive system of industry in which auto, steel, petrochemical, machine, electric engineering, cotton, and food production are the major parts.
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Every year, Ohio receives many visitors from Hubei, particularly government officials and students.
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This relationship is maintained organically by several groups and individuals across the state, including JobsOhio, Ohio's three Chinese chambers of Commerce (Cleveland, Cincinnati/"Midwest", Columbus), and grassroots groups like the Ohio-Hubei Friendship Association and Ohio Chapters of the Wuhan University Alumni Association.
Twinned Cities
Columbus has two Sister Cities and one Friendship City in the Chinese-speaking world.
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Tainan is the oldest city on Taiwan and was the capital for about 200 years. The sister city relationship between Columbus and Tainan was signed on September 9, 1980.
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Tainan's culture is rich with influences from Mainland China, the Dutch, and the Japanese, and is also home to the Siraya, one of Taiwan's indigenous peoples.
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Tainan is considered one of Taiwan's culinary centers, with flavors tending toward the sweet, as Tainan was also a center of sugar production. The inventor of instant noodles, Momfuku Ando, was from Tainan. In addition to its eats, Tainan is a popular tourist destination for its temples, colonial-era buildings, and markets.
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Hefei is the capital of Anhui Province in the People's Republic of China. The sister city agreement between Columbus and Hefei was signed on November 17, 1988.
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Settled for almost 3000 years, Hefei now has an urban population of over 6 million. For part of its history, Hefei was part of the Kingdom of Chu, whose heartland was in Hubei, Ohio's sister province in China.
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Hefei is known for being the home of the University of Science & Technology of China, as well as the hometown of famous people such as the upright scholar-official Bao Gong, Qing Dynasty reformer Li Hongzhang, and Nobel prize winner Yang Zhenning.
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To learn more about our sister city relationships, contact Eric McGraw, chair of Greater Columbus Sister Cities International's Hefei/Tainan Committee.
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Friendship City
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On October 30, 2009, the City of Columbus signed a Friendship City agreement with Wuhan, the capital of our sister province, Hubei.
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This agreement formalized a long-standing relationship between the two cities, and compliments a sister-university relationship between OSU and Wuhan University.
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Wuhan is home to 35 institutions of higher education and has a student population of about 1.3 million (about 2x the urban population of Columbus). It is a major transportation hub for rail and Yangtze River traffic and is the location of the newest US consulate in China.
