Country Garden Forest City Invited to Attend Fortune Global Forum

Themed "Openness and Innovation: Shaping the Global Economy", this year's Fortune Global Forum, one of the most influential forums on economic development in the world, engaged political and business leaders from around the world in discussions on the impact of changes in technology, changes in the political discourse and the rise of China within the global business community. Vice Premier of China's State Council Wang Yang attended the opening ceremony and delivered a keynote speech. Several executives at Country Garden, a privately-held company that is representative of the new generation of Chinese firms, were invited to attend the forum with the goal of letting attendees learn more about its new residence-industry ecosystem.

"I have a dream that one day we can live safely in a city where there are no vehicles on the road, the exterior walls of buildings are adorned with plants and parks can be found everywhere so that we can go there for a moment of relaxation on a sunny day, a run or a swim." Country Garden chairman Yeung Kwok Keung's vision has become a reality, as represented by Forest City and the firm's several Techtowns all of which received positive response from attendees for their vertical greening and three-dimensional design, complemented by the smart city systems that support urban operations, community management, property services and smart homes.

After laying the foundation stone for Tonghu Techtown in Huizhou with Yeung Kwok Keung and other guests in attendance on December 5, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins arrived in Guangzhou on December 6 to attend the Fortune Global Forum. He said, "We totally agree with the vision and plan for Tonghu Techtown, and we believe that it provides a platform on which we can bring the best technologies to all buildings in the town."

With technology, innovation, intelligence and an ecosystem serving as the core, Country Garden's residence-industry projects are all located in China's first- and second-tier cities as well as countries along the One Belt, One Road route. Country Garden has already built a series of Techtowns in the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regions, with its first benchmark project the Tonghu Techtown in Huizhou. The company has also developed Forest City, the world's first three-dimensional modern residential project, in Malaysia's Iskandar Development Region adjacent to Singapore.

At the end of October of this year, Country Garden Forest City won the Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements Award (SCAHSA) for the second time, and received the Global Model of Green Building Industrial Park award for its fabricated construction park. The award, supported and guided by leading authorities including the United Nations Environment Programme, announced only 23 winning cases worldwide this year. This is the second year in a row that Forest City has garnered the honour, demonstrating that the project's exploratory efforts in creating and building a fully functioning, ecologically intelligent city in what had been a completely uninhabited area has been recognized by the world.

In addition to the distinctive urban planning, Country Garden Industrial Park has explored how to create and implement a full-scale, successful residence-industry integration and ecology. At variance with traditional property development which treated offices and factories no differently from residential facilities, Country Garden encapsulated its concept in the tagline "Build a nest for the Phoenix and nurture its growth", by developing a city that starts with the industries that will be located there, then adding the properties that will serve those industries. Moreover, the real estate developer provides the companies that choose to settle there with financial support and application scenarios, focusing on creating an innovation-driven industrial development platform.

A presentation on Tonghu Techtown, Country Garden's first domestic industrial park, was given at the Fortune Global Forum. The project, which is currently under construction, focuses on creating a world-class Internet and smart management industrial park relying on a Cisco Data Center. Many top shelf companies and institutions, both domestic and foreign, including Cisco, iSoftStone, Shenzhen Yitoa Intelligent Control and Sinovation Ventures, have signed cooperation agreements with the project.

Country Garden Forest City, which has been designed to provide support for many projects that are in the process of materializing as a result of the One Belt, One Road initiative, has inked memorandums of cooperation with over 50 leading companies in their industries, including Huawei, Cisco, Accenture, Midea and PCCW Solutions, to jointly build the new "international capacity cooperation park", with the goal of assuring manufacturing capacity for projects that result from One Belt, One Road. The Prime Minister of Malaysia Najib Tun Razak has stated on several occasions that Forest City will be a focus of the country's new economic growth, enhance the country's industrial value chain, and create 220,000 jobs across the green intelligence, tourism, conventions and exhibitions, financial services and e-commerce sectors over the next 20 years.

Notably, this forum inaugurates the Fortune Brainstorm Tech International, an entity that will pay attention to the innovative companies that are sprouting in China and to the country's technological transformation. The forum also hosts the Future of Cities Forum, inviting mayors from key cities worldwide to engage in discussions on city governance and experiences where innovation made a difference. Wang Shao, chairman of the Guangdong Real Estate Association, commented, "Country Garden's industrial park projects including Forest City and Techtowns effectively address the many 'urban diseases' that currently afflict most cities and revive urban vitality with the ecologically intelligent city planning and the residence-industry integration ecology with the city's industries as the focal point for the overall blueprint, offering Chinese wisdom and solutions for the planning and building the world's future cities. It was no surprise that this topic became the most talked about item at the forum."

SOURCE Country Garden Holdings