The Global Mayors Dialogue took place in Xi'an, capital city of northwest China's Shaanxi Province from Monday to Wednesday, bringing together mayors and senior city officials from across the world to explore high-quality urban development empowered by technology and culture.
Held under the theme "Empowering High-Quality Urban Development Through Technology and Culture", the three-day event featured immersive site visits, scenario-based dialogues, and roundtable discussions to facilitate in-depth exchanges among participating delegates.
A key highlight of the visit program was the delegates' trip to the Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, where they viewed the Terracotta Worriers up close and gained first-hand insights into the conservation, revitalization, and contemporary renewal of the historic cultural heritage site.
"I visited the Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum six years ago. During this visit, I found that the museum has made significant progress. I had never seen the Cultural Relics Protection, Research and Restoration Center that we saw today. The team responsible for the restoration work is excellent," said Shady Yehia Elmashad, deputy governor of Beheira in Egypt.
During the event, participants also released the "Global Mayors Dialogue – The Xi'an Consensus on Silk Road Urban Development", under the Global Mayors Dialogue framework, focusing on cultural heritage, technological empowerment, green transition and people-to-people exchanges.
For participating international city leaders, the event has also opened up new avenues for long-term bilateral and multilateral partnerships.
"This Global Mayors Dialogue is a fantastic opportunity to build those long lasting partnerships, because we don't just want to be transactional, we want to create a prosperous future for both of our peoples and importantly for the places that we love," said Tania Tapsell, mayor of Rotorua, New Zealand.
World mayors gather in Xi'an to explore tech, culture-driven urban development
China's development has never been a "threat" to anyone but the source of growth advancing common development of all countries, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a regular press conference in Beijing on Friday.
Some Western media and think tanks are peddling so-called "China Shock 2.0," saying that "China is achieving fast development in high-tech sectors such as renewable energy and AI and relies on foreign markets to absorb its overcapacity, thus reducing the market share of developed countries and sending more serious shock waves to the global economy compared with the era of traditional manufacture industry," while there are foreign commentators saying that the "China Shock 2.0" argument ignores the genuine innovation occurring within the Chinese industrial ecosystem and that Chinese export is the exact booster of the global economy that is needed in the turbulent period and more indispensable than ever.
Commenting on that, Lin said: "From the world's factory to the world's market and innovation powerhouse, China's development is achieved through strong performance driven by innovation and brings tangible cooperation opportunities and space to the world. High-quality Chinese products represented by the 'old three' of textiles, furniture and home appliances have stabilized the global industrial and supply chain, lowered the living cost of global consumers and eased the inflationary pressure worldwide. China's green production capacity represented by the 'new three' of electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels has bridged the gap between supply and demand in global green development and bolstered the global energy transition and low-carbon development. Moreover, China's high-tech products represented by the 'new new three' of robots, AI and innovative drugs have broken high-tech barriers and monopoly and enabled people in more countries to access affordable new technologies," said the spokesman.
"Openness and cooperation bring about progress and win-win result. China's development has never been a 'threat' to anyone but the source of growth advancing common development of all countries. What really creates 'shocks' to the world has never been the innovation of Chinese companies and efficiency of Chinese industrial capacity, but protectionist moves of setting up barriers, decoupling and severing industrial and supply chains. China will stay committed to high-standard opening up, defend the multilateral trading system and provide more certainty and new impetus to the world economy with its own steady development," said Lin.
China's development never a threat: FM spokesman
