When the humorous, passionate, knowledgeable Hu left the central government and became mayor of Taichung six years ago, he put aside all pretention, choosing to run the city in the down-to-earth manner of a small businessman rather than the haughty style of a bureaucrat. Sentiment in the city, which ranks in the top five places in Taiwan in terms of citizens' satisfaction with their government, continues to be positive. How has Hu turned Taichung into a cultured and productive new urban center? An abridged version of our interview follows.

Q: Taichung has been changing very rapidly in recent years. Real estate investment has been heating up, the economy has been expanding, and the arts and culture scene has been blossoming. How do you read the underlying significance of these developments?

A: A number of delegations have visited Taichung over the last couple of weeks. They've included Switzerland's UBS Funds, the Macao real estate association, Japanese property development companies, and the American Chamber of Commerce in Taipei, as well as the writer Lung Ying-tai, who brought along a group of Hong Kong cultural workers. It's like the old saying, "When spring comes to the river, the geese are the first to know." Businesspeople are very sensitive. They go where they opportunities are. That's especially true in real estate.

Over the last five or six years, investors have poured more than US$50 billion into Taichung projects, including the Central Taiwan Science Park and the Precision Machinery Technology and Innovation Park, creating 50-70,000 job opportunities. With the economy strengthening, people have gained confidence in and hope for the future.

Q: When you took office, you emphasized using culture to build Taichung's city "brand," and over the years you have brought many world-class exhibitions to the city. Meanwhile, Taipei has continued to strengthen its foundations, foster talent, and make advances. In your view, what are the ultimate strengths of Taichung?

A: A city that lacks a clear orientation will have nothing unique about it, no face of its own. I think this is a common problem for Taiwanese cities.

Look at the three big cities of northern, central and southern Taiwan. Taipei has a political and financial infrastructure that Taichung can't match. Kaohsiung has the steel and shipbuilding industries, as well as the harbor and the transportation industry; for us to compete with it on an industrial basis is a pipe dream. But Taichung can compete on the basis of "refinement." If we foster the development of culture, education, the arts and the performing arts in Taichung, we can make people associate the city with a burgeoning cultural scene.

Taipei probably scores well overall in the cultural "decathlon," but I want to beat it in a few individual events. Look, when Yo-yo Ma, Jose Carreras, and Luciano Pavarotti came to Taiwan, each only performed in Taichung. It's also the only city where the Ming Hwa Yuan opera troupe performs two New Year's shows because Taichung has the ticket sales to support it. Artists used to view Taichung as a wasteland in terms of ticket sales. They never used to put on major performances here. Now, everyone comes.

Let me give you some numbers. During my first year in office, citizens attended an average of 4.1 cultural events per year. By my fourth year in office, that had jumped to 19.9 events, surpassing Taipei. This year, it's 28 events, which ranks third in Asia. And our cultural budget is only one-tenth that of Taipei's. These days we can fill up an amphitheater with a piano concert.

Q: Even the taxi drivers have started coming to performances, too. Clearly, you're promoting cultural events that don't just target middle-class or upper-class audiences?

A: During the city's annual "cultural season," which runs from July through October, there are performances in at least eight districts every weekend, or more than 130 over the course of the season, all of them free. You've got Taiwanese Opera, jazz, school music clubs, body painting.... The public can take in any of them at their leisure, and they become a little more cultured in the process.

Last week, there was a folk concert that would have amazed you. The amphitheater only seats 10,000 people, but 40,000 or 50,000 came. They sat on the grass on the hillside and watched the show on the big LCD screen. And everything was orderly in spite of the numbers. No one even left any litter on the ground after the show.

Q: In addition to making culture the city's foundation, you have said that Taichung must "turn its eyes to the international sphere" and learn from Luxembourg, Ireland, Singapore and Shanghai. Can you speak a little about what we can learn from their experience?

When talking about internationalization, I like to say, "The sky is the limit; the earth is the platform." To succeed in Taiwan, you must first excel on the international stage. The reason is that your competitors aren't only located in Taiwan. I have proposed "LIST" as an alternative to the concept of the BRIC nations and Professor Charles Kao's Greater China economic bloc (CHAT). The L in LIST refers to Luxembourg's financial development. Taichung has only six branches of international banks and no financial industry, making it inconvenient for foreign businesses to operate here. The I is for Ireland, which has been very successful in attracting international investment. As small as it is, it has been a magnet for one-third of US investment in Europe. The S is for Shanghai and Singapore, which have engaged in very successful urban redevelopment programs and attracted large numbers of tourists. The T is for Taichung itself. I call these my "four golden eminences."

Let me give you an example. Ireland has been attracting capital from every sector of industry, and rates well in terms of the tax breaks it offers, its labor supply, and the efficiency of its government. Once Taichung's manufacturing industry reaches a scale that makes further growth difficult, I'd like to see investment here flow primarily into our service industries. With that in mind, when I go abroad to drum up investment, I encourage top-flight hotel groups (Singapore's Hong Leong Group), major department stores (Harrods), and even the likes of Michelin-rated French chef Alain Ducasse to open businesses in Taichung. I have also met with people in the financial sector and gotten several major banks interested in coming to Taichung.

Over the last 30 years, Taichung has established a strong foundation in traditional manufacturing industries. During the last decade, its optoelectronics and other high-tech industries have taken off. Over the next 30-50 years, I expect Taichung to become central Taiwan's service industry headquarters. The current population of central Taiwan from Miaoli down to Yunlin is about 6 million. These people come to Taichung to shop in department stores, see movies and dine out. For this reason, I felt it important to align Taichung's development with global trends. But when I actually attempted to do so, I discovered that not being a major metropolis and not being the capital city imposed limitations that make things very tough. Nonetheless, there are some areas where we still have a lot of room to shine.

Q: You have stressed that Taichung's development should incorporate that of central Taiwan's six counties and cities, that it should move towards a regional economic development model. To date, however, no progress has been made. Nantou, for example, has tremendous tourism resources, but has yet to integrate its development with that of Taichung.

A: The lifestyle and economic development of the central region could be shaped collectively, but there is currently too little communication and consensus among its cities and counties. Budgets are tight, so everyone wants someone else to do the heavy lifting. They don't have the means to actively pursue getting in step with us conceptually or methodologically.

Let me give you a simple example: We have a hard time getting big stars like Jolin Tsai to perform at our annual New Year's concert because they'd rather do a show each in Taipei and Kaohsiung, just flying from one to the other. They don't want to come to Taichung for a single concert. The only way we would be able to get the singers interested would be if they could earn more from shows here than from a show each in Taipei and Kaohsiung. Given that, we should organize performances all around central Taiwan. I've been talking to people about the idea for years, but have never been able to put it together.

Q: When discussing urban culture, there's no getting away from "people" and "lifestyle." Why do you think the people of Taichung have a different attitude towards life than those in other cities? How should the government integrate and apply the incredible creativity of the people of Taichung to make the city still more unique?

A few days ago, I read a letter to the mayor in which a citizen described Taichung in a way I'd never heard before: "Taichung is a laidback city." I think Taichung's laidback approach to life is its most important characteristic. The people here are laidback. They don't pressure themselves a lot, so they've been able to make enjoyable lives.

Taipei's cultural infrastructure has been centrally planned and was built on the back of the whole nation. Taichung has nurtured its creativity on its own, and our creativity is intimately connected to our outlook on life and our economic strength. If it were to lose its connection to people's lives or its economic incentives, it would dry up.

Last year, for example, Taichung put on a lantern festival to celebrate the arrival of the Year of the Dog. While other cities and counties made their main lantern a politically correct native Taiwanese dog, I told the contractor we chose to think about who the lantern was being designed for. What kind of lantern would the kids enjoy? So we ended up with a Snoopy design for our main lantern. In the end, we spent less than any of the cities and counties in the region and had the largest attendance.

Taichung's prosperity in recent years has provided a great setting for fostering creativity. My "Technology Park and Guggenheim" policy spurred business investment and provided our citizens with economic well being, allowing their creative engines to run on and on.

In addition to encouraging people to be creative, the government wants also to support the products of their creativity. For example, in the past I've marketed taiyang cakes, and more recently I've promoted "pirate" rice rolls, Yang Ching-hua's springroll-like runbing, and Dawncake's cheesecake in the hope of providing them with tangible support.

Q: Mayor Hu, you've striven to improve public safety and traffic since taking office. The statistics show large improvements, but the public doesn't see it that way. What do you need to do to improve the public's confidence?

A: You can ask anywhere in Taiwan; the public finds it difficult to be fully satisfied with its government. Law and order involves two issues. One is improving the basics. For example, we've lowered auto thefts from more than 600 cars per year six years ago to 200 per year now. Motorcycle thefts have fallen even more. The second is whether the number of high-profile cases has been reduced. Several of Taichung's big cases, such as the Keng-tu Yuan teashop murder and the Manniu energy drink poisoning have involved people from outside of Taichung coming into the city to commit crimes, but the bad impression created remains attached to Taichung.

When I took office, Taichung's citizens had a law and order satisfaction rate of 32%. At the end of last year, it was 61%, which is better than those of Taipei City, Taipei County, Kaohsiung City and Kaohsiung County. This year, the National Police Agency reported that crime in Taichung had fallen by 22%, a figure that ranked number one in the nation. It's hard to change subjective personal impressions, but an objective assessment of the law and order situation in Taichung would be that it's "continuing to improve." You can't just casually overlook the hard work and achievements of the police.

Maybe some of the statistics aren't good enough to fully satisfy the public. I sometimes wish I was a magician because I really know how the public feels. When you place your trust in a mayor, you have great and urgent expectations. I'll do my utmost to fulfill them.

Hu feels that Taichung's creativity is built upon the twin foundations of its outlook on life and its economic strength. He further believes that its recent prosperity provides fertile soil for creative growth. The tallest building in the photo is Taichung's newest landmark--the fashionable, technologically advanced Hotel One.

Taichung mayor Jason Hu is a former minister of foreign affairs. Since taking office, he has striven to rebrand Taichung as a cultural haven and pushed the long-overlooked city into the international limelight.