On the morning of July 5, Yin Yong, Mayor of Beijing, met with Mohamed Ali Al Shorafa, Chairman of Abu Dhabi Department of Municipalities and Transport (DMT) in Beijing.

Yin said the meetings and phone calls between President Xi Jinping and President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan since last year have set the course for the future development of China-UAE relations. In recent years, Beijing has been keeping to its strategic positioning as the "four centers", implementing the new version of the Master Plan of Development for Beijing, and upholding five key initiatives to promote high-quality development. Great efforts have been made to build a smart city with a development framework put in place and improve the integrated networks of city operation and smart governance so as to deliver smarter and more precision urban governance. As capital cities, Beijing and Abu Dhabi play an exemplary and leading role in China-UAE sub-national exchanges. Beijing is willing to strengthen friendly exchanges and cooperation with Abu Dhabi at all levels and in all fields. With the signing of the Letter of Intent to Establish Sister City Relationship, efforts will be made to intensify high-level exchanges between the two cities, align each other's urban development strategies, promote cooperation in areas such as urban planning, smart cities, and sci-tech innovations, and create a mechanism for enterprises to exchange and cooperate with each other, so as to make more contributions to the building of a comprehensive China-UAE strategic partnership.

Shorafa spoke highly of Beijing's socio-economic achievements, and said that Abu Dhabi is willing to learn from Beijing's experience in urban planning and development, digital economy, and autonomous driving. He hoped to further deepen friendly exchanges and mutually beneficial cooperation with Beijing from a new starting point to better benefit the citizens of both places.

After the meeting, Yin and Shorafa signed the Letter of Intent on the Establishment of Sister City Relationship Between Beijing and Abu Dhabi.

Hussain bin Ibrahim Al Hammadi, Ambassador of the UAE to China; and Mu Peng, Secretary General of the People's Government of Beijing Municipality, attended the meeting.

(Written by Yang Qi; Video by Chen Xing, Song Hengyu)