Xi'an becoming a highland for opening-up, thanks to BRI
As a vital birthplace of Chinese civilization, Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province, is committed to building itself into a new highland for reform and opening-up while promoting economic and trade exchanges under China's Belt and Road Initiative.
"In the future, Xi'an will take the opportunity of building a comprehensive pilot zone to fully promote technological innovation and industrial revolution, helping the countries along the Silk Road to share new opportunities in the industrial revolution," said Xi'an Mayor Li Mingyuan at the 2019 Euro-Asia Economic Forum held from Sept 10 to 12.
Since its establishment in 2005, the forum has played a key role in enhancing mutual understanding between European and Asian countries.
It has deepened cooperation in various fields, accelerating the opening-up process of inland areas.
With the theme of "Jointly building the Belt and Road Initiative: high-level cooperation and high-quality development", this year's event attracted government officials, entrepreneurs and experts from 58 countries and regions around the globe to carry out in-depth dialogues.
Xi'an becoming a highland for opening-up, thanks to BRI
The forum had 10 parallel sessions covering finance, ecology, cultural tourism, meteorology, science and technology, as well as 14 supporting activities including conferences, festivals, performances and competitions.
Since the launch of the BRI in 2013, the scale of trade cooperation among China, Europe and Asia has been further expanded, with optimized trade and deepened ties in investment, infrastructure and innovation.
Fu Ying, director of the Center for Strategic and Security Studies at Tsinghua University, said at an economic and trade summit during the 2019 Euro-Asia Economic Forum that strengthening economic cooperation among China, Europe and Asia is important for stabilizing the world economy.
Promoting economic cooperation in the Eurasian region requires financial support as well.
In recent years, China and Eurasia's development banks have initiated cooperation on project investments, financing, mechanism construction and training.
In June, the China Development Bank completed the contract signing of a special loan equivalent to 250 billion yuan ($35.1 billion).
In addition to economic and trade cooperation, the forum is also promising in terms of urban sustainable development, technological innovation, ecology and meteorology.
"Green building and sustainable urban development is a worldwide issue. It is related to the sustainable development of the economy and society and people's longing for a better life," said Qian Xiao'an, vice-mayor of Xi'an, at the green building and urban sustainable development summit under the 2019 Euro-Asia Economic Forum. As a main event of the forum, the summit attracted more than 350 large-scale overseas investors from Canada, the United Kingdom, South Korea and more than 200 domestic companies.
"Protecting the ecological environment means protecting productivity and improving the ecological environment is to develop productive forces," Qian said.
In recent years, Xi'an has actively implemented the concept of green and low-carbon sustainable development, and continuously promoted green buildings through exploring integrated pipe corridors and garbage sorting.
Wang Shengxue, president of the Shaanxi Real Estate Research Association, said to promote ecological civilization, it is essential to solve ecological and environmental problems, meaning to implement the green development concept and form a green production mode and lifestyle.
In order to transform Xi'an's energy system and promote ecological civilization, the administrative committee of the Xi'an Chanba Ecological District signed a strategic cooperation agreement with the office of the management of Chinese projects on regional energy under the United Nations Environment Programme at the ecology session of the 2019 Euro-Asia Economic Forum.
Under the agreement, the Xi'an Chanba Ecological District can use the UNEP's global energy resources to build a regional energy mechanism based on the comprehensive assessment of regional systems and improve the efficiency of integrated energy.
As another important parallel session of the forum, the meteorological summit focused on big data and advanced meteorological technologies including satellite remote sensing data.
It explored the promotion of cross-border integration and application of meteorological big data to help the high-quality development of the economy and society.
To build a smart city and improve modern meteorological services, Xi'an will further promote the automated observation capabilities of meteorological equipment, realize the comprehensive identification of elements such as sunshine, frozen soil, cloud and atmospheric components.
