This year, Qingdao has established friendly relations with seven internationally renowned cities, including Minsk, the capital of Belarus, Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, and Samarkand, a historic and cultural city in Uzbekistan.

The city's network of relationships now spans 93 cities in 53 countries, creating an international circle of friends across five continents. Additionally, Qingdao has expressed intentions to establish friendly relations with Kazan in Russia, Alexandria in Egypt, and Lagos in Nigeria this year.

To enhance its exchanges with sister cities, Qingdao has hosted 17 high-level sister-city exchange activities. Furthermore, efforts to enrich the outcomes of sister-city cooperation have led to the implementation of 25 practical cooperation projects, including the establishment of the Egypt representative office of Shandong Port Group (West Asia).

In January of this year, Qingdao signed a friendship city agreement with Samarkand, Uzbekistan. The city also welcomed a delegation of students from Long Beach, the United States, for a themed visit and exchange program, significantly enhancing Sino-US people-to-people friendship.

To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Russia and the China-Russia Year of Culture, Qingdao hosted a Sino-Russian youth friendly painting exhibition, and 75 outstanding paintings by youth from Qingdao and its Russian sister cities Perm and Kazan were selected and exhibited in Beijing.

California State University Long Beach students experience paper-cutting in the Qingdao West Coast New Area in January. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]