Thematic forum of Global Digital Economy Conference 2023, “Building Smart Cities in a Changing World”, to be held on July 6

The thematic forum of Global Digital Economy Conference 2023, “Building Smart Cities in a Changing World”, will be held at Peking University on the morning of July 6. The Global Digital Economy Conference is hosted by the People’s Government of Beijing Municipality, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Commerce, the Cyber Administration of China, and the China Association for Science and Technology. It is one of the highest-level digital economy conferences in China.  

Leading experts and scholars discuss the core challenges of global development

Dr. Xi Chen, the founder of Harbor Overseas, Professor Dong Wang, Executive Director of the Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding (iGCU) at Peking University, and Professor Geng Xiao, Chairman of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance, will respectively preside over the “Smart City and Regional Integration”, “International Relations and Regional Integration”, and “International Finance, Global Governance, and Regional Integration” topics. These three topics cover the core challenges of global change.

The distinguished guests participating in the sub-forum will include resident representatives of international organizations such as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in China, ambassadors of many countries to China, leaders or chief engineers of central enterprises such as China Communications Construction and China Railway Construction, as well as international relations and international finance experts from Peking University, Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal University, Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), Columbia University, and other key universities at home and abroad. Ambassadors of Croatia, Malaysia, and other countries to China, diplomats from the Delegation of the European Union to China, Ireland, Pakistan, Turkey, Hungary and Vietnam, and representatives from the China-Africa Development Fund and Export-Import Bank of China will participate in the sub-forum offline and communicate with each other.

This thematic forum has four highlights. The first is a high degree of internationalization. This offline meeting is expected to gather several ambassadors, counselors, and other senior diplomats of various economies in China. The second is the high level of participants. Nearly half of the participants were representatives above the bureau or departmental level from various economies. The third is high professionalism. The guests attending the meeting are all former global political leaders, world-renowned experts, scholars, or representatives of enterprises who are deeply involved in the industry. The fourth is a focused theme. The regional integration-oriented smart city, international relations, global governance, and international finance forum agenda setting will cover the core challenges under global development. The 2023 Asia Smart City Ranking and 2023 The Group of Twenty (G20) Smart City Ranking, as core products with the global discourse power of smart cities, will also be released at the meeting.

Presenting new theoretical frameworks and policy ideologies for global regional integration

Dr. Xi Chen and Harbor Overseas are the author and publishing institution of the 2023 Asia Smart City Ranking and 2023 The Group of Twenty (G20) Smart City Ranking, with iGCU as the joint publishing institution.

It took more than half a year to complete the reports. A total of 243 cities (144 from Asia, 184 from G20, and 86 reused in both rankings above) were evaluated. A total of 16 indicators, in traditional, digital, and institutional infrastructure, were weighted by 32 global policymakers and first-class experts. The report conducted evidence verification on tens of thousands of data sources in 21 languages.

The reason why the G20 rankings are separated from the Asian rankings is that the G20 is the biggest twenty economies in the world, and it reflects the highest level of development of smart cities in the world.

The reports, 2023 Asia Smart City Ranking and 2023 The Group of Twenty (G20) Smart City Ranking, not only provide the systematic and operational roadmap to the global smart city clusters but also provide new theoretical frameworks and policy ideologies for global regional integration.

Chinese version (published by Beijing Municipal Government): https://www.beijing.gov.cn/fuwu/lqfw/ztzl/gdec2023/bksz/ztlt/202306/t20230627_3147939.html
Arabic version: http://arabic.china.org.cn/txt/2023-06/28/content_89822190.htm