(www.southcn.com 29th Nov. 2004) The seminar called "Handling emergencies and crisis management” was held in Guangzhou China Mayors buildings on 29th November. More than 40 mayors and government officials from whole country attended the three-day seminar for discussion. It is understood that this is the first time in China that the mayor, the government officials, experts and scholars got together to study the issue -- "handling emergencies and crisis management" .

As the reform of management in Chinese government is developed and "head of the accountability system" is put into practice, the demanding of the capacity of every local government to deal with emergencies and crises becomes higher. Organizing the seminar is aim to help local leaders to improve their capacity of crisis response. And through this short-term learning and training, they are able to change "crisis" to "chance" , to reduce the crisis in minimize as much as possible and to communicate with public through media effectively at the same time.

In foreign countries, crisis response is accepted as common lesson in the training for enterprise managers and government officials. But there is very few specialized courses on this topic in the previous cadre training system or even the management courses in colleges of China. This seminar is held by class China Association of Mayors and the State Council Information Office. They are in accordance with the purpose "for urban development, and for the service of mayor" from the cadre training center and they invite both domestic and abroad experts to provide a valuable opportunity of learning and communicating for Chinese mayors.

This seminar class takes the system of combining theory with skill training. Not only sharing with senior government officials' experience of dealing with crisis, but also have skill training of handling media relations from international PR consultancy firms when crisis arise. Not only have analysis of USA Federal and local governments on crisis management, but also have the domestic authority’s opinions about the status of Chinese government dealing with the crisis. The experts and scholars from home and abroad have formed an international training group, have had an in-depth exchanges and exploring with managers of Chinese cities

Mr. Hu Weiping, director of The Information office of the State Council, Tao Siliang, Deputy Secretary of China Mayor Association and Mr.Esmond K.L.Quek, chief executive of Hill and Knowlton (China) Public Relations Co,Ltd made a speech separately on the kicking off. Mr. Lu Guangjin, vice director of The Information office of the State Council, Ms. Sun Yuhong, senior director of Hill and Knowlton (China) Public Relations Co,Ltd, Mr. Lan Zhiyong, professor of private university in Arizona ,the United States state , Professor Xue Lan and Yin Dakui ,(former) vice minister of health management college of Qinghua University also made wonderful speeches on " handling news on public crisis", " public relations and public communications of crisis time" , "experience of crisis management from USA federal and local governance," " the role of government in the public's crisis management "," dealing with crisis and public events ".