Chief executive officer Anthony Schinck, mayor John Philips and two officers from the economic department will spend a week in Yangzhou as they finalise negotiations to establish a Sister City relationship, which the CEO believes will open up doors for trade in Ballarat’s education, tourism, science and technology, culture and agriculture sectors.

This will be the fourth delegation to the province by council representatives, while Yangzhou Municipal People’s Government has visited the City of Ballarat on five occasions over recent months as momentum builds on the relationship.

“What will happen over time once the government-to-government relationship has been established, we will eventually step aside and allow businesses-to-businesses - but it does take time in order to pave the way for that to occur,” Mr Schinck said.

City of Ballarat manager economic development, Sean Cameron, is one of the representatives who will join the CEO and mayor on the September expedition.

Mr Cameron said when you compare the $28,000 spent on this delegation to the $10 million-plus revenue in tourism alone at Sovereign Hill that the Chinese provide, it is money well spent.

“Right now we've only got a really small percentage of the international Chinese tourism market, but already we've seen about 80,000 people come through (at Sovereign Hill), so it is really important we keep the relationship going,” he said.

“The other area is education. It is a big income earner at Federation Uni. They've currently got about 5,000 international students and they also go over there and train as well.

Mr Schinck ensure the community that council would continue to monitor the Sister City relationship in terms of its value for Ballarat.

“It’s something we have to be careful with. If it doesn't return over time we wont continue down this path.”