Marine cooperation platform promotes ocean economy’s future
Participants from across the world gathered at the three-day 2022 East Asia Marine Cooperation Platform Qingdao Forum, held both online and offline. The forum addressed common challenges in the ocean-related economy while promoting winwin cooperation.
Titled “Embrace the Ocean Decade for a Shared Future”, the event took place from Tuesday to Thursday in Qingdao, East China’s Shandong province.
The platform has been working under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative for years, though this session also prioritized the promotion of a series of visions initiated by the United Nations, such as the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development program.
Besides the main forum, the event held 10 major activities, including some subforums, competitions and exhibitions. Nearly 400 guests, including experts, economists, scholars and entrepreneurs at home and abroad, as well as more than 1,000 enterprises, attended them.
Port is recognized as a key platform for one region to connect with the globe. The global economy and trade are poised for a long recovery period and technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data can cause profound changes in the industry while breeding new breakthroughs.
Echoing China’s global governance vision featuring extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, attendees shared their ideas about the cutting-edge technologies and methods to help promote the integration of the service industry into the dual-circulation development pattern.
A number of valuable reports were also released at the scene. Organizers also held some matchmaking conferences to help the participants carry out investment promotion and introduce talent.
Delegates from Yantai, Weihai, Weifang, Rizhao and other marine cities involved in the Jiaodong Economic Circle in Shandong province, as well as Tianjin, China (Hebei) Pilot Free Trade Zone Caofeidian Area, China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone Zhoushan Area and some coastal cities such as Sanya, Hainan province and Xiamen, Fujian province, participated in the investment promotion conferences.
Meanwhile, the 2022 East Asia Seaport Alliance Conference, a supplementary event of the forum, was held both online and offline on Tuesday. It attracted global experts, scholars and business leaders engaged in the shipping and seaport industries.
Qiao Fangli, an academician at the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences, said in a speech that safe marine transportation could not be achieved without the oceanic climate prediction. To better understand and manage the ocean, people should further strengthen the simulation and perform more accurate prediction of the marine environment.
Wei Zhiqiang, vice-president of Ocean University of China, shared his understanding of how to achieve intelligent management of ocean, which is believed as a new opportunity in the future. The integration of ships, ports and seaboard areas is an urgent issue, Wei said. In the future, the OUC promised to provide sufficient human resource for the construction of green and smart ports.
On Tuesday, an international forum addressing the visions such as the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development and marine environment governance took place during the main forum.
The event brought together experts from all over the world in the field of marine affairs to offer suggestions for promoting marine environmental governance and the sustainable development of the marine industry. The participating experts held in-depth discussions on how to improve the ocean observation and prediction ability while learning more about ocean and climate. They also discussed strategies to give better solutions for the sharing of data and information related to sea level, marine environment, marine ecology and climate.