By Mitch Moxley and Liu Baijia

China's emerging cities, led by the booming port city of Dalian, are dynamic, innovative, tech-savvy and hold a vision for sustainable growth, said business and government leaders at the 33rd China Daily CEO Roundtable in Dalian.

The Roundtable, called "Strategic Partnership between Emerging Cities and Entrepreneurs: The Dalian Vision", focused on the growing need for cooperation between cities and businesses in an increasingly globalized world. Dalian embodies this trend and should serve as a guiding light for other emerging Chinese cities, concluded experts at the Roundtable.

"Dalian is a particularly great place to have this discussion about leadership, partnership and government cooperation," said Peter Bowie, CEO of Deloitte China and the Roundtable's co-chair.

By Peter G Bowie

Dalian, a leading example of China's emerging cities, is undergoing a high rate of economic growth (16.5 percent in 2006), creating strong demand for public facilities and services.

It's one of the five cities in China with the highest concentration of overseas representation and has 84 of the Fortune Global 500 companies and more than 8,000 foreign enterprises invested in the city.

A recent World Bank report on the investment environment in 120 cities in China based on the results of a survey of 12,400 foreign and domestic companies indicated Dalian in many respects is a leader in the quality of investment climate.

By Alexander Wan

The 33rd China Daily CEO Roundtable was held in Dalian, the host city of Summer Davos, the "Inaugural Annual Meeting of the New Champions".

"One difference between our roundtable and the 70-plus forums and panels at Summer Davos is that our delegates had to wake up at 5:30 am, if not earlier, to arrive at the venue on time for this 'power breakfast'," said Zhu Ling, editor-in-chief of China Daily.

Roundtable delegates included top-notch leaders in the Chinese and global business communities such as BT, TNT, Deloitte, China Mobile, Lenovo, Bayer, Standard Chartered, Adidas and Shui On.

By Fu Yu

Pierre E Cohade was impressed by how clean the city was and how his "green factory" in Dalian did well since he made more business trips there after being named chairman of Goodyear in Asia.

"We have established a 'green factory' with no contamination or pollution and in the past five years we have been trying to reduce energy consumption by collaborating with the Dalian government," Cohade said.

The Dalian government has attached great importance to building an environmentally friendly city by transferring the economic development model to energy-conservation, in an effort to attract Fortune 500 companies to invest in the city.