As a response to China's national strategy and in order to build the Yangtze River delta city group into a world-class city group with global influence, the “Yangtze River Delta Cities Group Development Forum: Building a World-class City group with Global Influence” was successfully held at Lujiazui China Financial Information Center in Shanghai on August 16, 2016 under care and support from the China Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and Shanghai Municipal Government. The forum is jointly sponsored by Shanghai Academy, the Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui Academies of Social Sciences, China Financial Information Center and Shanghai University, and supported by the China Society of Urban Economy and the Chinese Association for Regional Economics.

The Yangtze River Delta City group is an important area where the "One Belt and One Road" and the Yangtze River Economic Belt converge, and it is of high strategic importance in the greater context of China's modernization drive and all-around opening up. This forum aims to harness the combined input of government, industry and the academic and research sectors, to provide advice and proposals to the mid-September workshop of main leaders of the cities in the Yangtze River delta area.  It will propose viable road maps and plans for the implementation of the Planning for the Development of Yangtze River Delta City group, and build the Forum into a pivotal and highly influential regional think tank.

Xu Kuangdi, vice-chairman of the 10th National Committee of the CPPCC, accepted the invitation and gave a keynote speech. Wang Weiguang, President of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), and Yang Xiong, mayor of Shanghai Municipality, respectively addressed the forum.

In his speech, ranging from the stages of urbanization to the precepts of large city group development in the world, Xu Kuangdi pointed out that, as an area where the city group has developed to relative maturity, the Yangtze River delta area shall give full play to regional advantages in talents, innovation and internal and external development, so as to build the area into an economic high land where different high technology industries complement each other in combination with problems in the development of city groups in China. The principle of humanistic orientation shall be adopted with an emphasis on clear division of work, collaboration and integrated development within the city group, and ecological restoration, water resource conservation, and incorporation of greening and separation belts shall be a planning priority.

Wang Weiguang said, the Yangtze River delta city group is an important area where the "One Belt and One Road" and the Yangtze River Economic Belt converges, and it is of high strategic importance in the big picture context of China's modernization building and all-around opening up. In this June, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) issued Planning for the Development of the Yangtze River Delta City group, which is a major measure that conforms to the contemporary context to serve the general thrust of China's modernization drive. It is also an innovative measure to help change China's economic growth model and to cultivate new international competitive advantage in the context of slowing global economic growth, while underlining the new normal that China's economic development has entered. By building a world-class city group, the Yangtze River city group can achieve better integration of the areas resources, give better play to the area's advantages in development, and break through the bottlenecks and constraints of resources that hinder its constituent cities, so as to truly achieve "innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared" development of the city group. The cities in the Yangtze River delta area have already been exploring inter-municipal cooperation for years, and have made a series of achievements. Wang hopes that, the City group can boost the coordinated development of the region by taking the advantage of the Planning and he also hopes that the social sciences research institutions and different kinds of think tanks in the Yangtze River delta area can invest more efforts to study and address actual problems in implementation of the Planning, put forward viable policy advice, and contribute wisdom and strength to the building and development of the Yangtze River Delta city group.

Yang Xiong said, as the core city in the Yangtze River city group, Shanghai cannot achieve sound development without support and coordination from the city group. Shanghai shall consciously plan and promote its own development in concert with national development,especially that of the Yangtze River delta city group, and advance the integrated development of the Yangtze River delta area with other cities.

Xiang Wei, deputy director of the Section of Urbanization, Department of Planning of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), gave an interpretation of the preparation of the Planning for the Development of the Yangtze River Delta City group. Leaders of the social sciences academies of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui and Shanghai all gave keynote speeches at the forum. At the sub-forums, the attending guests engaged in heated discussions and exchanges surrounding the following five themes:  "Innovation: Yangtze River Delta High-tech Innovation Park and World Class City Group Building", "Coordination: Smart Cities in the Yangtze River Delta Area and World Class City Group Building", "Green: Co-governing of Ecology in the Yangtze River Delta Area and World-class City Group Building", "Openness: Interconnectivity in the Yangtze River Delta Area and World Class City Group Building", "Sharing: Mechanism Sharing in the Yangtze River Delta Area and World-class City Group Building" .

At the closing ceremony, Li Peilin said when making the summary report, discussions about the planned City Group should focus on three questions: First, how best to further implement the Planning for the Development of the Yangtze River Delta City group. The question of how to make the professional discussions of think tanks a routine mechanism, and to let the results of such discussions serve the city group's development is worthy of our careful thinking. Second,how to understand the importance of the Yangtze River delta city group. The practices and experiences of other countries or regions show that a world-class city group with global influence needs to be built on a basis of continuously growing gross economic volume. Therefore, we need to promote the Yangtze River delta City Group to have clear development characteristics, and to lead the innovation and development in other areas across the country. Third, how to build social living circles within the Yangtze River delta city group. Interconnectivity of life is an important characteristic of city groups. Therefore, to narrow the gap between urban and rural areas, the gap between different regions, and the gap between different divisions of administration, will be one of the important tasks for future building of the Yangtze River city group.

A total of over 500 persons, including leaders of relevant government departments, scholars and experts from research institutions, representatives from the industry sector and news media, attended this forum.