Riverside officials travel to earthquake-battered Japanese sister city Sendai

Officials from Riverside are in China this week, looking for investors for renewable energy projects. It's just one goal of the city’s weeklong trade mission.

The city is also promoting UC Riverside as an attractive destination for science and engineering students from China.

Chinese industrialist Winston Chung donated $10 million to UCR’s Bourns School of Engineering earlier this year. He’s also a majority stakeholder in Riverside-based recreational vehicle builder MVP RV.

“So we’re going to pay him a courtesy call," says Riverside's director of international relations Lalit Acharya, "and also visit or sister city Jiangmen, which is in the south of China.”

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Acharya says the primary goal of the mission is to land investment dollars for solar energy project through the federal ED-5 visa program.

“Where investors, when they put half-a-million dollars into a business in the United States and generate at least 10 jobs, become eligible for a Green Card," says Acharya. "And one mechanism for aggregating that type of investment is something called a Regional Center. And one of those has been set up in Riverside with the sole purpose of attracting investments into solar projects.”

Acharya spoke from Sendai, Japan where a Riverside sister-city delegation delivered half-a-million dollars in earthquake relief aid before heading to Shangai. Riverside will wind up its China trade mission at the end of the week.