中欧社会论坛 - China Europa Forum

On March 8, some 40 senior discussants, representing a wide range of stakeholders including policymakers, business leaders and academics from Europe and China gathered in Brussels for a roundtable entitled “Greening China’s Cities of Tomorrow” which was organised by Friends of Europe, a leading European think-tank that aims to stimulate thinking on the future of the EU.

At the juncture of the EU-China Urbanisation Partnership initiated at the 14th EU-China Summit, the roundtable focused on two themes: an EU-China “Partnership for Sustainable Urbanisation” , and the Challenge of China’s “Urban Billion”.

This was the starting point of the partnership between the Forum and Friends of Europe.

“During many trips to Europe, I have learned about greening buildings and public spaces but am still grasping the essence of European green culture (…) The concept of green cities is different in China and the EU. We are very interested in learning what we can from Europe about how to raise the efficiency of urbanisation in China while decreasing the consumption of resources and raising the quality of services.

Urbanisation in China will continue growing at 0.8-1% a year. What we are aiming at is increasing not only the quantity but also the quality of that growth.”

“It is our goal to resolve the disparity between rural and urban populations. In this regard, Chengdu can be viewed as a role model for how rural migrants can be assimilated into the urban environment. In order to fully benefit from progress in urbanisation, we need a harmonious development which includes the support of the Chinese people.”

The following Chinese key speakers were jointly invited by China-Europa Forum and Friends of Europe:

Tie LI, General Director of the China Centre for Urban Development, National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in China

Jun ZHANG, Deputy Director, Chengdu Environmental Protection Bureau Qingming ZHAN, Professor, Associate Dean, School of Urban Design, Wuhan University

Shuo CHEN, Professor, Deputy Director, Fuzhou Planning and Design Institute

Bin DAI, Professor, Associate Dean, School of Public Administration, Southwest Jiaotong University

Xiaodong LU, Vice President, Chengdu Association for Science and Technology

Edwin Chan, Professor, Building and Real Estate Department, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University