Representatives from visiting friendship cities participate in a business matching event on Thursday, which also attracted participation of many local enterprises from Shanghai. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Shanghai has hosted a two-day event to deepen cooperation with its friendship cities in various areas including smart city development, innovation, and economic and trade collaborations.

Representatives from 13 cities in 12 countries including Dunedin in New Zealand, Vientiane in Laos, Johannesburg in South Africa, and Los Angeles in the United States, were invited for the two-day event, which entailed city tours and a business matching fair on Thursday, and the 2023 Shanghai International Friendship Cities Cooperation Forum on Friday.

"Cities are important for promoting high-quality development, creating high-quality living, and comprehensively building a modernized country," said Hua Yuan, vice-mayor of Shanghai, in the opening speech at Friday's forum.

"Strengthening the construction of smart cities, promoting economic and trade cooperation, and jointly promoting high-quality development are strategic choices shared by Shanghai and other cities."

Jules Radich, mayor of Dunedin, New Zealand, agreed. In 1994, Shanghai established a friendship-city relationship with Dunedin and since then the two cities have maintained good exchanges and cooperation.

While this was his first time to Shanghai, Radich said Dunedin's friendship-city relations with Shanghai have laid a good foundation for further cooperation between the two cities.

"I think all relationships, be they personal or business, are built on trust. When we have trust built up for nearly 30 years and the friendships are reliable, then we find it easier to do business with other people," he said.

The mayor of the New Zealand city said he hopes to cooperate with Shanghai in the fields of education, scientific research, technology tourism and fashion, and help more local products enter the Chinese market.

"Our efforts today can create a lot of opportunities for tomorrow," Radich said.

Sello Enoch Morero, member of the Mayoral Committee for Finance of the City of Johannesburg, South Africa, said during Thursday's business matching event, he hopes to support the healthy development of local small and medium-sized enterprises in the financial, service and manufacturing fields through economic and trade cooperation with Shanghai.

"Small and medium-sized enterprises are the future of urban development," he said. "We not only want economic growth on paper, but also hope to achieve substantial changes in life. This requires sharing development dividends with foreign cities."

The 2023 Shanghai International Friendship Cities Cooperation Forum takes place on Friday. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

At Friday's forum, smart city development was one of the key topics for discussions.

Morero said Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa with a population of over 4 million, has been learning from Shanghai in smart city development since 2009 when the two cities established friendly exchange relations.

Since 2011, Johannesburg has started to build an extensive internet network consisting of both broadband Wi-Fi and free hotspots in public spaces. The city has also implemented a smart program in which people can pay for municipal services through smartphones, which is one of the things they learned from Shanghai, according to Morero.

Morero said they also hope to develop technology for preventing crimes, as well as enhancing the entire communication network for transport, fire, and emergency management systems.

Wajenda Chambeshi, director of International Relations, Policy and Protocol of Los Angeles, focused more on working to implement Los Angeles's partnership with Shanghai in building a green shipping corridor between the world's two major ports.

"I heard Shanghai is even way ahead of Los Angeles. They have automated the ports with the containers. They are controlled remotely, which is something I can continue sharing with my team in Los Angeles to make our partnership more implementable," Chambeshi said.

Representatives also shared their experience of exploring the city of Shanghai.

While Radich said he was most impressed by Shanghai's livability, Morero mentioned Shanghai's great accessibility of its public transport and smart technology. The senior official of Johannesburg also showed great interest in Shanghai's waste management.

As for Chambeshi, he was most interested in Shanghai's embracing of artificial intelligence for its urban development.

During his visit to the Shanghai Urban City Planning Exhibition Center on Thursday, Chambeshi said he learned of how Shanghai is going to integrate the use of AI to make the people's lives better in the next 50 years.

"Shanghai has been very AI open for me personally," said Chambeshi, who was visiting Shanghai for the first time.

Above all, Chambeshi, who has managed to take the city's subway on his own and did some shopping during one night in Shanghai, said he was impressed by the safety in the city.

"You can walk any time of the night, and see how it's organized and planned," he said.