Trio of key international events kick off in Guangzhou to make better cities

Three key international events - the 2018 Global Mayors' Forum, the fourth Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation and the 2018 Guangzhou International Urban Innovation Conference - kicked off on Friday in Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province, amid great expectations, according to organizers.

The Global Mayors' Forum is jointly organized by the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, the United Cities and Local Governments, or UCLG, the World Association of the Major Metropolises and the municipal government of Guangzhou.

Organizers said that the meetings will help global cities to cooperate and achieve top results in an inclusive and innovative way.

The forum focuses on pressing topics. Among them are open and inclusive innovations in urban governance, the use of blockchain for metropolitan and urban management, urban development in bay areas, the Belt and Road Initiative and urban construction, cultural inheritance and innovation for future cities, as well as urban transportation.

The events are intended to encourage cities to promote international peace and development and showcase what China has achieved in the process of deepening reform and opening-up and urbanization, the organizers added.

Maimunah Mohd Sharif, executive director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, said: "I believe that the Global Mayors' Forum will encourage in-depth dialogue among city leaders and decision-makers.

"The forum is an opportunity not to be missed, for all of us to raise awareness and share ideas on how we can make our cities better places for ourselves and for future generations," she added.

This year's Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation has received 273 innovation projects from 193 cities in 66 countries and regions. The number of both countries and regions, as well as the number of participating cities, have both reached a record high, the event's organizers said.

Winners of the award will be announced on Friday evening.

Experts said the forum, the award and the conference are not only the result of an era during which China successfully implemented its reform and opening-up policy, but is also an important initiative for Guangzhou to expand foreign contacts multilaterally and build itself into an international exchange hub as well as an international metropolis.

New initiatives

Guangzhou joined an important international organization - the World Association of the Major Metropolises - in 1993. Since 2014, Guangzhou has been elected the organization's co-president city for two consecutive sessions and has been home to the association's Asia-Pacific liaison office. Last year, it was announced the city will host the organization's 13th Metropolis World Congress in 2020.

Guangzhou has been co-president city of the UCLG - whose city and association members are present in over 120 UN member states, across seven world regions - for four of its consecutive international gatherings since 2007.

In so doing, it has taken the lead among China's metropolises in multilateral exchanges with international cities.

Guangzhou joined the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group in 2015 and also established relationships with several international organizations, which effectively promoted the city to become an international exchange hub.

On the basis of long-term friendly cooperation, Guangzhou - together with the World Association of the Major Metropolises and UCLG - launched the Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation in 2011.

This has been held biennially since 2012 to recognize achievements by international cities and local governments in the practice of innovative governance. More than 150 cities from over 50 countries and regions applied to participate in each of these award sessions, cumulatively submitting more than 700 initiatives. Officials said Guangzhou has at the same time established good working communications with more than 200 cities globally via the award.

In recent years, Guangzhou has deeply involved itself in the development of the Belt and Road Initiative, promoted its plan to increase links with international sister cities and actively explored new mechanisms for cooperation and communications among these metropolises.

Guangzhou has established sister city relationships with 38 cities from 35 countries. It will have 35 cities from 28 countries with friendly cooperation and communication relationship when it signs agreements to join hands with the city of Gorgan in Iran and the city of Ayia Napa in Cyprus on Friday.

In addition, the city has set up sister port relationships with 44 foreign ports, effectively promoting people-to-people exchanges and partnerships in diverse fields. Guangzhou, Auckland and Los Angeles have provided an innovative model of multilateral exchanges and cooperation. They took advantage of their special relationship as sister cities, to set up a tripartite economic alliance in 2014, in a bid to establish even closer cooperative ties.

Local officials said that Guangzhou wants to build on that success to establish similar alliances with other sister cities.

Earlier this year, Guangzhou released a three-year action plan (2018-20) to establish the city as an international exchange hub.

According to the blueprints, the city will among other things promote the building of a high-level open economic system, a platform for diversified international exchanges and cooperation, a structure for wide-scope communications among cities and create a high-level internationalized services environment - making sure that it emerges as an influential international exchange hub by the year 2020.

In the second half of 2018, Guangzhou started to actively participate in development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and contributed to developing the area into being an internationally competitive one.

Analysts said that what Guangzhou has been striving to do partly explains why the city made itself on the list of the world's top 30 first-tier cities in such as short time.

The city was ranked 27th among 707 cities in a 2018 world city system ranking released by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, compared with its ranking as 40 on the previous list in 2016.

It was also ranked China's fourth largest financial center on the list after Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing.