On November 19, Beijing was invited to participate in the online meeting on local cooperation of China-Spain Forum, at which Chinese and Spanish representatives discussed about such topics as digital economy, green economy, and smart city. President of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries Lin Songtian, Chairman of Spain-China Council Foundation Riberas, Chinese Ambassador to Spain Wu Haitao, Spanish Ambassador to China Rafael Dezcallar, and leaders of cities including Shanghai, Xi'an, Chengdu, Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia attended the meeting. Hou Junshu, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of Beijing Municipal People's Congress, attended the meeting and gave a speech on behalf of Beijing.

Hou Junshu introduced Beijing's efforts to build the "Two Zones", namely, the Integrated National Demonstration Zone for Opening up the Service Sector and the China (Beijing) Pilot Free Trade Zone, and its digital economy development, and put forth three suggestions on digital economy cooperation between China and Spain. First, the two sides should make a sound cooperation plan, covering top-level design, project reserve plan, and path of implementation. Second, the two sides should explore more areas of cooperation, with a greater emphasis on complementarity along the digital economy industry chain. Third, they should refine the approach of cooperation by diversifying the cooperation mode. Madrid, a sister city of Beijing, expressed its willingness to deepen the communication with Beijing and strengthen cooperation in digital economy, and introduced its own experience in advancing sustainable transport, urban digitalization, and green construction. The representative of Barcelona introduced the city's experience and practices in building a smart city in terms of information-based infrastructure, intelligent public services, and green and sustainable urban development, and proposed to intensify the regulation of emerging technologies and build a fairer digital age. The representative of Valencia introduced the city's measures to balance the allocation of urban resources and implement the "15-minute city" concept.

The participants highly commented on the meeting as it was themed to address the concerns of all parties, and the speeches by representatives from various parties offered meaningful references. They agreed that with the faster pace of urbanization worldwide, all cities must prepare and plan in advance, and work hard to realize the goals set in the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Focusing on green economy, digital economy and smart city as key areas of future cooperation, the cities will complement and learn from each other with respective strengths and advance the sustainable development goals (SDGs) by carrying out local projects. They will strive to create an equitable, fair, and just social environment and a happy and harmonious life, in a bid to drive the sustainable development of cities.

Founded in Beijing in July 2003, the China-Spain Forum is an organization agreed upon by top government leaders of the two countries, and an important platform for wide-ranging bilateral cooperation initiated by Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries and Spain-China Council Foundation. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the establishment of sister-city relationship between Beijing and Madrid. The two cities have carried out effective and fruitful cooperation on pandemic prevention and control since COVID-19 broke out. Beijing Foreign Affairs Office will stay in contact with Madrid and keep pushing forward the pragmatic cooperation between the two cities.