Global youth marvel at realities of smart future on China trip

BEIJING, June 23 (Xinhua) -- For 29-year-old Peter Carberry, an IT professional from Ireland, his recent visit to China has presented him with many pleasant surprises compared with his first trip eight years ago.

In 2016, it took him over 40 hours to arrive in China, with stopovers in Amsterdam and Doha. Earlier this month, he flew directly from Dublin to Beijing, and thanks to an exchange-facilitating policy implemented in March, he entered China visa-free.

"In less than a decade I have seen China become an increasingly accessible place for Irish people, whether it is for tourism, education or to do business," he said.

Invited by the Center for the Americas, China International Communications Group, Carberry is one of 27 young representatives from 21 countries and regions, including the United States, Russia, Germany, Italy, Thailand and Japan, to participate in a weeklong trip that ended Friday to explore China's modern and traditional aspects.

The tour, called Future Close-Up, involves visits to the Industrial Museum of China, Tsinghua University, and a smart hotpot restaurant, among other places, in Beijing, Shenyang, and Xiong'an New Area.

In Beijing, they visited Chinese tech giant Tencent, where they were introduced to a set of digital tools, including mobile payment platform WeChat Pay, that would help them more conveniently navigate life in China, such as ordering food and taxis.

"It's impressive to see how the ecosystem of digital payment has been transformed into the digital economy and how it's now present or perpetuated into every aspect of Chinese life," said Stacey Ann Pearson, head of Web3-APAC at Amazon Web Services, who regarded the field as a telling example of China's innovation advance.

"In the past several years, there has been a shift which is China is no longer a fast follower, but also taking on an innovator role where the innovations are coming from China that are being replicated outside the country," said Pearson. "This is a monumental shift for a country to move further up the value chain in terms of technology."

On the trip to Shenyang City in northeast China's Liaoning Province, Simon Buschges, a German working for a French consulting firm, was glad to see the strong economic ties between the city and Germany, evidenced by the lively scenes at the China-Germany Enterprise International Innovation Incubation Center and the Sino-German International Street.

He also found it interesting that like the Industry 4.0 initiative in Germany, China is pushing forward the development of new quality productive forces.

"It's right to think big, to see what's possible and go beyond just what is currently the norm, and to take the next step and promote new things," he said, describing Shenyang as a grand city with robust innovation and a foresight to follow the new.

Having been working in Shenyang for nearly 20 years, Ng Yuk Yeung Paul, CEO of South China Holdings Company Limited and executive chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Liaoning Associations, has witnessed the revitalization of the industrial hub.

"With a solid industrial foundation, rich resources and a drive to upgrade its economy, Liaoning stands to be an ideal investment destination," he noted, adding that the federation plans to invite Hong Kong chambers of commerce and industrial associations to visit the province to explore cooperation opportunities.

In China's "city of the future," the Xiong'an New Area, they visited the China Telecom smart city industrial park, which saw its phase-1 project put into operation in May. A tour to Baiyangdian, the largest freshwater wetland in northern China, showed them the remarkable water quality improvement thanks to a rehabilitation and protection campaign.

Before the visit, Phillip Forman, a young U.S. entrepreneur, thought Xiong'an would be just Beijing 2.0.

"I was really impressed how the local government has said that they had visited like 20 different major cities across the entire world and took inspiration from everything while designing Xiong'an," he said.

The trip is the first China visit for Elena Poliakova, assistant professor with the IESEG School of Management in France, who was awed by the country's modern infrastructure, advanced technologies, clean environment and nice food.

She is already looking forward to her second China trip. "My foreign friends in China told me that the country is changing so rapidly that you will find new things here even after one year's gap in visiting."