April 8 – Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Jining met with Ray Dalio, founder of US investment firm Bridgewater Associates.

Chen said he hopes Dalio will continue to serve as a bridge, encouraging more entrepreneurs, investors, and especially young people to gain a deeper understanding of China, particularly Shanghai. He also called for more diverse exchanges among young people in the two countries to support cooperation across a wide range of fields.

Dalio shared his impressions of participating in recent China-US youth exchange activities and offered his views on global economic trends. He said he would leverage his strengths and share his experience to contribute to closer economic and trade ties, as well as people-to-people exchanges between the two nations.

April 9 – Shanghai Party Secretary Chen Jining met with Jose Pedro Aguiar-Branco, speaker of the Portuguese parliament.

Chen said Shanghai will continue to strengthen its friendship city ties with Porto and expand cooperation with Portugal more broadly. He called for increased investment and trade, joint efforts to advance digital and green transformation, and closer exchanges in areas such as public services, urban governance, and grassroots legislation, and stronger people-to-people exchanges, especially among young people.

Aguiar-Branco praised Shanghai as a dynamic and highly internationalized metropolis, saying Portugal-China economic and trade cooperation and people-to-people exchanges are well reflected in the city and have yielded fruitful results. He expressed hope for deeper cooperation in economy, trade, energy, tourism, and sustainable development to better benefit the people of both countries.

Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng led a municipal delegation to Almaty and Astana in Kazakhstan from April 7 to 10, aiming to advance high-quality Belt and Road cooperation and implement the outcomes of the second China-Central Asia Summit.

During a meeting with Kazakhstan's First Deputy Prime Minister Roman Sklyar, Gong said Shanghai stands ready to expand practical cooperation with Kazakhstan across various fields, contributing to the next "golden 30 years" of China-Kazakhstan ties.

Sklyar expressed Kazakhstan's willingness to create a favorable environment for Chinese enterprises to invest and operate in the country, and welcomed more companies from Shanghai to do business there. He also expressed hope for broader practical cooperation with Shanghai to inject new momentum into bilateral ties.

In a meeting with Almaty Mayor Darkhan Satybaldy, Gong expressed hope that the signing of the first memorandum of understanding on friendship city cooperation between the two cities will help expand practical cooperation into broader areas and deepen it further.

Satybaldy said Almaty looks forward to strengthening exchanges and cooperation with Shanghai in areas such as urban development, transportation, the digital economy, artificial intelligence, and science and education.

In a separate meeting with Astana Mayor Zhenis Kassymbek, Gong called for closer exchanges, mutual learning, and practical cooperation between the two cities in areas including green and low-carbon development, resilience and safety, and smart governance, so as to bring more benefits to the people of both cities.

Kassymbek said Astana is keen to deepen cooperation with Shanghai in urban governance, industry, digitalization, and finance.

During his stay in Almaty, Gong attended the Almaty-Shanghai Economic and Trade Forum and witnessed the signing of 12 cooperation agreements worth more than $2.7 billion between Shanghai institutions and enterprises and Kazakh counterparts.