A documentary series entitled "Zhongshan & Its Sister Cities" was released at a seminar on international sister cities exchange held in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province on January 10, 2024.

The multilingual short video series Zhongshan & Its Sister Cities is officially released.

The documentary series shows videos filmed by a number of vloggers at home and abroad, presenting the cooperation between Zhongshan and its international sister cities, including Honolulu (USA), Burnaby (Canada), Markham (Canada), and Moriguchi (Japan), in the fields of history and culture, ecological protection, industrial development, sports and so on.

These stories are designed to help audiences worldwide further understand the developing, open, friendly, and cooperative Zhongshan, and then understand the real, multi-dimensional, and panoramic China.

Frank Scarpitti delivers a speech via video.

"Our two cities have had a long and storied friendship, city relationship," said Frank Scarpitti, mayor of Markham via video link. "I look forward to a future meeting to renew our friendship, and strengthen our economic and trade ties."

Tyler Dos Santos-Tam delivers a speech via video.

"We have a long-standing history of Chinese immigrants to Hawaii, primarily from Guangdong. Of course, Sun Yat-sen was also from Zhongshan," said Tyler Dos Santos-Tam, a city councilor member of Hawaii, via video. "Because of our sister city program, Honolulu can welcome people from all over the world and build people-to-people connections which are so important in this day and age."

Canadian vlogger Adrian Berzenji shares his insights on telling stories about sister cities during the roundtable dialogue at the seminar.

The seminar was intended to explore strategies to promot people-to-people exchanges between sister cities, to tell the stories of sister cities around the world, and to use new media to tell China's stories to the world.

The Zhongshan International Communication Development Report (2023) was also released at the seminar. The report reviews what Zhongshan has done to promote the city globally and analyzes the opportunities and challenges in the future, and aims to show the world an open, innovative, colorful, comprehensive, and three-dimensional Zhongshan.

Staying at the forefront of China's reform and opening up, Zhongshan is one of the first cities in China to establish sister cities in the world. It has five sister cities and has signed Memoranda of Friendship and Cooperation with 15 cities worldwide.