World's Major City Leaders Gather in Beijing

Sixth Major Cities' Summit Beijing 2000 Opens

The mayors of famous cities around the world gather in the Chinese capital to discuss the development of cities against the backdrop of economic globalization in the new millennium.

"The future of humanity lies in cities," Kofi A. Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, said in a message to the Beijing 2000 World Major Cities Summit which opened Thursday.

He said that cities are engines of growth and crossroads of ideas. They can also be models of democracy and multicultural coexistence, but the very same cities can also be places of exploitation, disease, violent crime, unemployment, underemployment and extreme poverty.

The summit is the last gathering this century for mayors from developing and developed countries, and it is the first time for Beijing to sponsor such a conference.

Sixth Major Cities' Summit Beijing 2000 Opens

Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji attended the opening ceremony and gave a speech. He said that "big cities as national or regional centers are playing an unreplaceable role in a country's prosperity and world development."

Zhu noted that it is significant that so many mayors gathered in Beijing to discuss cooperation in the next century.

According to Zhu, there are 400 million city dwellers in China enjoying modern civilization, and the development of Chinese cities will enter a new stage in the 21st century when China's modernization drive accelerates.

The theme of the conference is "21st Century: Cities' Development and Cooperation."

Mayors will discuss the building of more livable cities, the impact of globalization and information technology on cities, cooperation between cities with different cultural and social systems and the future of cities famous for their historical associations.

Urbanization is now a general trend worldwide. In 1900 only 160 million people, or 10 percent of the world's population, lived in cities. Currently, half the world's population are city dwellers.

Within 25 years, two-thirds of the population will live in cities.

Experts say that urbanization will develop at the fastest rates in developing countries. Cities are home to 1.5 billion poverty-stricken people worldwide and various urban diseases are threatening social cohesion and stability.

Mayors or deputy mayors from 33 cities attended today's opening ceremony.

The summit was first held in Tokyo in 1985 and has so far been staged five times.