On the afternoon of January 24, Qingdao and Samarkand in Uzbekistan signed in Beijing an agreement to establish sister city relationships.

The city of Samarkand, the second largest city in Uzbekistan, is the capital of Samarkand State as well as a famous ancient city and cultural tourism center in Central Asia. Over the recent years, Qingdao has taken advantage of the SCO Demonstration Area to pursue pragmatic cooperation with the city of Samarkand and achieved good results. Under thee sister-city framework, Qingdao is poised to carry out exchanges and cooperation in an intensive way on economy and trade, tourism, medical service, education, energy, science and technology and humanities, among other fields, which will contribute to promoting at local levels and from a higher starting point the China-Uzbekistan community with a shared future. As the agreement was signed, Qingdao has boasted 15 sister cities in 12 SCO member states. (Xue Huafei)