Director-General of Research and Innovation of the European Commission attended the China-EU Urban Innovation Award Ceremony in Beijing

On December 12, 2018, the “Horizon 2020” Urban-EU-China Innovation Platform on Sustainable Urbanization Award Ceremony was held in Beijing, co-hosted by the Urban-EU-China Innovation Platform Project Group, China Center for Urban Development and the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. Director-General of Research and high-level representatives of the EU delegation attended the event and witnessed the awards ceremony. Among the 20 pairs of city project collected by the Urban-EU-China Innovation Platform, Wuhan-Manchester Partnership City Project stands out as the first and only pair of cities which win the China-EU Urban Innovation Award for its long-term and solid cooperation on sustainable urbanization.

In September 2016, the China Center for Urban Development, as the secretariat of the China-Eu urbanization partnership, jointly won the bid of “Horizon 2020” Urban-EU-China Innovation Platform on Sustainable Urbanization with 11 other Chinese and European research institutions. The platform will include policy strategies, city projects and stakeholder engagement to address common challenges and possible solutions that may be applied in both EU and China. With the Urban-EU-China Platform, the China Center for Urban Development is mainly in charge of the work including promoting practical cooperation between cities and summarizing classic urban cases.

In the past two years, the project group of the Urban-EU-China Innovation Platform has been committed to improving the EU-China urban cooperation mechanism, assisting in the establishment of the EU-China urban pilot project, strengthening the partnership between cities, enterprises and academia, and elaborately collecting outstanding cases of urban cooperation. Based on the comprehensive evaluation of a large number of China-EU partnership cities, Wuhan and Manchester, two pilot cities for the cooperation between China and Europe, were selected as the final winners.

Meanwhile, the project group of the EU-China Innovation Platform announced at the ceremony that, in order to continuously deepen the cooperation between Chinese and EU cities, the project team plans to annually hold the awarding ceremony of relevant awards. From 2019, China and Europe will recruit pairing cities into the project platform, and select pilot cities among them.

Liu Yue, director of the International Department of CCUD, introduced the background of the event and the important guests
Speech by Jean-Eric Paquet, Director-General of Research and Innovation of the European Commission
Qiu Aijun, Director of CCUD delivered the speech
Director-General of Research and Innovation of the European Commission awarded the prize for Wuhan and Manchester
Project leader Annemie Wyckmans introduces the China-EU City Partnership Award
Child choir performed “auld lang syno”

Wuhan, China – Manchester, United Kingdom Partnership Cities gathered in Beijing

Representatives from Wuhan and Manchester also attended the ceremony and gave acceptance speeches, sharing their experience and achievements in China-EU cooperation.

Representative of Manchester, CEO Joanne Roney delivered speech at the Award Ceremony
Representative of Wuhan, Chen Hong, Deputy secretary-general of the People’s Government  delivered a speech at the Award Ceremony

Wuhan and Manchester have formed City partnership since 1986. Over the past 30 years and more, the two sides have exchanged representative offices and conducted close exchanges and cooperation in economy, trade, science, technology and culture, with fruitful results achieved. The exchanges between Wuhan and Manchester have become a model of close ties between our two pair city partnership.

Manchester is a metropolitan borough of greater Manchester County in northwest England. It covers an area of 116 square kilometers and has a population of about 440,000. The region was once the cradle of the industrial revolution, dominated by tertiary industries such as financial services, business services and cultural and creative industries.

Meanwhile, as one of the “new first-tier” cities in China, Wuhan is playing an increasingly important role in China’s development, and its economic aggregate is constantly rising. It has been the only city that won the national “urban innovation award” and ranked top at the list of ten happiest cities in China in 2017.

The location and industrial types of the two cities are highly compatible. In 1986, the partnership agreement signed by the two cities first proposed to promote the economic development of the two cities based on trade and higher education cooperation, which was unique in the context of political and cultural exchanges dominated by other city partnership agreements at that time, and was regarded as the best practice with demonstration effect. In the 1990s, Manchester was invited to the European congress in Lyon to introduce other European cities with the experience of building partner relationship

For 30 years, Wuhan and Manchester have experienced tremendous social changes. In the future, the two sides will further strengthen exchanges and cooperation on how to cope with external impacts, such as climate change, reducing pollution, enhancing connectivity, developing the economy, improving people’s livelihood and providing quality medical care.

 

Background Reading:

In 2012, Chinese and EU leaders signed the Joint Declaration on the China-EU Partnership on Urbanization. Together, China and Europe agreed to strengthen interaction and cooperation, jointly seize the opportunities and cope with the challenges of future and strive to achieve win-win results. As the Chinese secretariat of Chin-EU Partnership on Urbanization, China Center for Urban Development earnestly implement Joint Declaration on the China-EU Partnership on Urbanization under the guidance of the National Development and Reform Commission. It actively promoted the pragmatic cooperation between central cities, established platforms for China-EU culture exchange, summarized city development experience and classic cases. It has successfully held EU-China Exhibition on Urban Development, 2016 Signing Ceremony of Cooperation Projects under the EU-China Urbanization Partnership, and APEC High-level Forum on Urbanization. Under the guidance of the National Development and Reform Commission, it has hosted “China High-level International Forum on Urbanization”, “International High-level Forum on Sustainable Urban Development”, “Urban-China-EU Sustainable development Forum” and other brands of international Forum and Expo.