CRI听力: China International Friendship City Conference

Anchor: China International Friendship City Conference started this week has provided a good platform for cities from China and across the world to communicate with each other. Delegates have exchanged ideas on urban sustainable development at the meeting.

Let's take a closer look with our reporter Liu Min.

Zhenjiang is a green city full of rivers, on the Yangtze River Delta. Across the Pacific Ocean, the city of Tempe is located in a dry desert area in Arizona in the United States. 21 years ago, they became sister cities and have cooperated in education, tourism, and business. Today, Brice Goitia, a 17 year old senior high exchange student from Tempe is one of the beneficiaries thanks to the international friendship city programme. He says the beautiful Chinese city has impressed him a lot.

"Partially because the culture is so strong, I was very happy to be a part of the happy community in Zhenjiang. People came to me and even if I don't know them they would help me."

In 1973, China's Tianjin and Japan's Kobe became sister cities, the first time China had established friendship with a foreign city. Over the past 32 years, more than 369 Chinese cities in 30 provinces have become sisters to more than 1700 cities and regions around the world. Former US President Jimmy Carter who's at the conference recalled the time when he and Deng Xiaoping jointly published the Sino-US Joint Communiques in 1978, announcing the establishment of a formal relationship between China and the United States.

"Since then not only within this country, but also around the world, China has reached out, and now is one of the most dynamic nations on earth in establishing friendship relations with other countries of the world. So it's not a coincidence, that this event is taking place in Shanghai, it comes naturally from the nature of the city, which is always been open, welcoming, expanding, and improving the life for its own people and at the same time, reaching out to people from all over the world."

Jimmy Carter says that even now his wife keeps the photo he took in 1949 of a narrow street in Shanghai. But today he took a photo standing by the side of the fastest train service in the world. The theme of the conference this time is Better City Through Cooperation, and more than 600 delegates from 49 countries have joined the conference.

For CRI, I'm Liu Min.