During his reception on Monday for Mr Luo Qiang, Mayor of Chengdu City in China’s Sichuan Province, Da Nang People’s Committee Chairman Huynh Duc Tho expressed his delight at fruitful results from bilateral cooperation programmes with Chinese localities in recent years.

Mayor Luo (left) and Chairman Tho

In particular, Da Nang has established bilateral relations with such Chinese localities as Shandong, Jiangsu, Macao Special Administrative Region, and Kunming over the past years.

In the first half of this year alone, Chinese visitor arrivals to Da Nang hit 368,086, accounting for 23.07% of the total of international tourists to the city.

Chairman Tho hoped that the bilateral relations with China would be fostered in such aspects as education, healthcare, tourism, and culture in the years ahead.

The host also said his city needs a helping hand from the Mayor Luo to  appeal for even more investors from Chengdu City, and Sichuan Province as a whole, to the city in the coming time.

In reply, the Chinese guest emarked Chengdu is the capital of Sichuan province, and its economic growth rate has been ranked 8^th amongst big cities of China.

He added Chengdu is currently building its second international airport. Once operational, the new airport will help the city handle a total of 150 million passengers per year instead of 50 million.

Hence, he hoped that the opening of Da Nang- Chengdu non-stop flights would take off soon, as well as the bilateral cooperation in the aspects of trading, tourism and smarter city development would be strengthened in the future.

Mr Luo also took the opportunity to convey the invitation of Secretary of the Sichuan Province Party Committee to the Da Nang leaders to visit some of provincial localities in an appropriate time.