On 6th March, Ambassador Gao Yanping met in the City Hall of Haifa with Mr. Yona Yohav, Mayor of Haifa. Mr. Dai Yuming, Counselor of the Embassy, Mr. Eliezer Kulas, President of Haifa City Council, Mrs. Bracha Sela, Secretary General & Foreign Relations Director of the municipality of Haifa and etc. were presented.

Ambassador Gao said that both the Jewish people and Chinese people have a long history and splendid civilization, the history of friendly exchanges between the two peoples is long . In particular, the Chinese people stretched out the the selfless helping hand when the Jewish people were suffered from the Holocaust, which was reviewed in the recently inaugurated exhibition named "the Jewish refugees and Shanghai" in the city of Haifa. Since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Israel in 1992, fruitful results have been achieved in pragmatic cooperation in various fields and mutual understanding and friendship between the two peoples have been enhanced continuously.

Ambassador Gao hoped that Haifa would seize the historic opportunity of the development of bilateral relations to further strengthen the cooperative relations of complementary advantages and mutual benefits, to make new contributions to the friendly and cooperative Sino-Israel relations and to push the friendly relations between Haifa and Shanghai, Shenzhen and Chengdu to a new height.

Mayor Yohav happily recalled his recent visit to China, and stressed that Israelis like deeply about the friendly and cordial attitude of the Chinese people and have a special feelings towards the Chinese People. The city of Haifa and Chinese cities, such as Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, have close contacts and fruitful cooperation over the years. The city of Haifa hopes to further develop the friendly and cooperative relations with China, especially is looking forward to starting Chinese medicine and Chinese education in Haifa, to opening a science and technology R & D center and to carrying out Chinese cultural activities.