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May 14, 2006 10:42 pm US/Central
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Daley Realized China's Importance Before Olympics
by Jay Levine
BEIJING, China (CBS) ―
It's a communist country shrouded in mystery, but China opens up to the world when it hosts the 2008 Olympics.
Mayor Daley is there right now hoping to get some insights about that bid, so Chicago can host the 2016 games. But the mayor is already very savvy about China's importance in the global marketplace.
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine is traveling with the mayor.
Mayor Richard Daley is about to start his first meeting with his Chinese counterparts, but the mayor realized the importance of China long before he decided to bid for Olympics.
More than half the students at Alcott Elementary School are taking Chinese. This is a 5th grade class.
"It's such a cool language with all the characters and strokes and sounds, and its so different from English," said 5th grader Mira Kovacova.
Mongwei Yu teaches all six Chinese classes at Alcott. They start them early here in kindergarten.
"I think we are doing these kids a favor here because they need to compete in the global market and this is one skill they need," Mongwei Yu said.
With the world recognizing China as an emerging economic superpower, this trip for the mayor will be more than just an Olympic fact-finding mission.
"When you go to Beijing and you have these interactions with government officials, what you find is they are hungry to find out how we do things here in the United States. He's going over there I suspect to learn how they're doing the Olympics. They're going to ask him, 'how do you run a big city, how do you keep things working all the time?'" said Marc Ganis, president of SportsCorp Ltd.
Interaction between leaders of the two countries is increasing as China opens its borders to visitors and increases access.
But the celebrations we saw when China won the competition to host the Olympics show what a huge priority these games are for them, a kind of coming-out party.
For us, they'd simply reaffirm our status.
"Being a global city means we have to go after global events," said David Weinstein, president of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center.
Weinstein has been actively pushing trade ties between Chicago and China. He thinks the mayor's pitch will be well received.
"I think the mayor is going to experience a very welcoming business community there that is going to have a heavy appetite to figure out how they can do more and more things with Chicago," Weinstein said.
Like the students at Alcott Elementary, who, if Principal David Domovic can put together the exchange visit gets his way, may soon be practicing their Chinese on the streets of Beijing.
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)