NEW links with a Chinese city and province could lead to increased investment in Oxford after an initial agreement was signed.

Oxford City Council and Oxfordshire County Council signed a memorandum of understanding with Langfang City People’s Government and Hebei Province to 'promote further cooperation'.

Langfang is about 34 miles south of Beijing and is within Hebei Province. The province has a population of 74m people. The UK’s population is just 65.6m.

It is hoped the new links will result in boosts to higher education in both places, along with internships and apprenticeships.

Here, a joint working group will be established to develop plans on how to develop work.

The Lord Mayor of Oxford, Colin Cook, signed a memorandum of understanding for the city council and county council at a meeting earlier this month.

He said: “I’m delighted to have signed this MoU with Langfang City and Hebei province, which underscores Oxford and Oxfordshire’s international outlook and appeal, particularly in terms of education, innovation and promoting clean, green and sustainable rural and urban environments.

“China’s long-running urbanisation has led to major planning, growth and environmental challenges.

“There is now a growing interest in developing smart and sustainable cities in China, and Oxford and Oxfordshire are seen as a leader in this field.”

The links are just the latest forged in the county.

On Monday, the city council agreed to push ahead with forging formal links with Ramallah, in Palestine.

Other work is currently going into linking Oxford with two new twin cities over the next few months – Wroclaw in Poland and Padua in Italy.

Ian Hudspeth, the leader of Oxfordshire County Council, welcomed the Chinese link and said: “Oxford is a world-leading city and looks to other places for inspiration while sharing its experiences and knowledge so that other areas in the world can benefit from innovations like low and zero-emission zones.

“This August, in partnership with Oxford University and Oxford city, we are supporting a number of students from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, and Global Leadership and Future Cities programme and asking them to do a piece of work around air quality, transport modelling and place making.

“This shows that we are already moving forward with the ambitions of the MoU.”

Oxford is currently twinned with five cities: Bonn in Germany, Leiden in Holland, Perm in Russia, Leon in Nicaragua and Grenoble in France.

Other towns formally linked to Oxfordshire include Argentan, in Normandy, France, which has been twinned with Abingdon since 1956; Neunkirchen-Seelscheid in Germany, which is twinned with Bicester; Witney’s twin town, Le Touquet. and Wantage's French twin Mably.