Another of Mayor London Breed's goals in her upcoming trip to China, besides getting a panda for the San Francisco Zoo, is apparently to chat up a university there about opening a satellite campus in SF's struggling downtown.
Breed already announced with some fanfare in February that she is trying to lure multiple historically Black colleges to take up some real estate downtown, dubbing the initiative Black 2 San Francisco. The schools the city is talking to in this effort are Charles R. Drew University, Howard University, Morehouse College, Morgan State University, Morris Brown College, Tuskegee University, and the University of the District of Columbia.
And in January, the University of California confirmed that it was entertaining invitations from Breed to open a satellite campus downtown as well.
Now, Breed tells the Chronicle that she is also seeking out a Chinese university for the same reason, and that this will be one of her goals while in China on a kind of marketing trip for the city starting Saturday.
Breed will reportedly meet with leaders from Fudan University, a research university in Shanghai, as one of the stops on her trip, which runs from April 13 to 21. Fudan University, Breed tells the paper, is "potentially looking at a site in San Francisco for a campus."
The trip is being paid for by the privately funded San Francisco Special Events Committee, a nonprofit which falls under SF Chief of Protocol Maryam Muduroglu. And Breed is being joined on the journey by a delegation of some 30 business people, entrepreneurs, and local Asian community leaders.
In Beijing, Breed is set to meet with US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns. And other stops will include meetings with local government leaders in Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Shanghai. Breed is also reportedly traveling to Hong Kong.
In addition to the panda pleading and the university-luring, Breed says she is also on a Mission to drum up more tourism to San Francisco from Chinese tourists, and to encourage airlines to fly more routes out of China to SF.
"The economic benefits of tourists that come here from China [have] been significant," Breed tells the Chron. "Tourists spend money. They shop downtown. They go to our neighborhoods. They eat in our restaurants. And we want to push for an economic boom."
Breed was personally invited to visit the country, her office says, by President Xi Jinping during his APEC visit, but no meeting with Xi appears to be on the books.
The trip also marks the 45th anniversary of San Francisco's sister city relationship with Shanghai, something that will also be celebrated next month with the mayor of Shanghai coming here.
Previously: SF Mayor Heads to China Next Week to Promote Tourism — and Lobby For a Panda