Diplomats, mayors and civic leaders from both sides of the Pacific gathered in San Francisco for the 8th US-China Sister Cities Summit, renewing their commitment to the subnational partnership that national governments alone cannot forge.

Themed "Shared Efforts for High-quality City Development", the summit drew more than 150 Chinese delegates representing 15 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, alongside 160 US delegates from 21 states and 36 cities.

The gathering, held on Friday, featured exchanges on three central themes — green development and urban governance, culture and tourism, and education and youth.

"Everything depends on meeting each other, shaking each other's hand, looking at each other in the eye," Carol Robertson Lopez, chair emeritus of Sister Cities International, told China Daily on the sidelines of the summit.

Gatherings like this one, she said, do something that virtual exchanges cannot fully replicate. "When we have gatherings like this, it just seals the friendships that we've developed in many cases online."

She added that hearing how cities in different countries have approached shared challenges is a form of practical benefit.

"What's really important is just bringing the people together," she said. "It's interesting to hear all the different things, and we do get a lot of ideas that we can take back home."

The gathering has grown into a platform for subnational diplomacy since its launch by the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, or CPAFFC, in 2014.

China and the United States currently maintain 50 pairs of sister provinces and states, and 238 pairs of sister cities.

Yang Wanming, president of the CPAFFC, pointed to California and San Francisco as proof of what local investment in the relationship can achieve. California holds more sister-city ties with China than any other US state, he said, and both California and San Francisco have been a pioneer in bilateral subnational engagement.

Yang cited two recent developments as an example of the momentum. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie visited Shanghai in April, his first official overseas trip as mayor, and within two months, Shanghai had sent a delegation to San Francisco to attend the summit. "This shows the deep relations between the two cities," Yang said at the summit.

He also highlighted the presence of Oregon Senate President Rob Wagner in October, who had visited China in October and returned to San Francisco for the summit, where he met with representatives from sister partners of Fujian province and Tianjin municipality. These showed the relationship becoming closer by visiting each other and the nature of win-win collaboration, he said.

Through openness and collaboration, the people in the two countries have continued to write new chapters of friendship, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng said in video played at the summit. For China-US relations to keep moving forward, he said, the two sides need not only meetings between the leaders, but also broad engagement across all social sectors.

The ambassador called for bringing local communities in the two countries closer together to make bilateral cooperation more active and sustainable.

Lurie, the San Francisco mayor, said his city is uniquely positioned to hold this summit. "Cities are where history is lived," he said. "Cities are where people build their small businesses, raise their families and form the relationships that cross oceans and cultures."

San Francisco, he said, is home to the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the most vibrant Chinese American communities in the country.

"For generations, Chinese Americans have helped write the story of this city, shaping our economy, our civic life and our culture in ways that are impossible to separate from who San Francisco is," he said.

It was that history that led Lurie to make China the destination for his very first foreign trip as mayor. During his April visit to Shanghai, marking the 46th anniversary of the San Francisco-Shanghai sister city relationship, he held working sessions with leaders from museums, universities and performing arts organizations to map out the next phase of cooperation.

"That visit was a major milestone for our administration," he said.

Beyond Shanghai, Lurie emphasized San Francisco's friendship-city ties with Shenzhen and Guangzhou in Guangdong province, where ongoing collaboration spans innovation, trade and education. "What these relationships show is that even when the world feels complicated — and we know it is — cities can find common ground," he said. "We have a unique ability to build understanding where it matters most, and create something better for the people who come after us."

The summit concluded with the signing of five cooperation agreements, covering 31 cooperation projects and spanning sister-city partnerships, cultural and tourism exchanges and youth programs.

Zhang Jianmin, China's consul general in San Francisco, described sister-city cooperation as carrying "tremendous potential as engines of economic growth" and called on both sides to broaden their ambitions as the world changes around them.

He identified a range of practical areas where cities can deepen their work together: smart city development, culture and tourism, youth engagement, public safety, housing and infrastructure revitalization. He also pointed to emerging frontiers, including artificial intelligence, that can give the partnership new relevance in a technology-driven era.

liazhu@chinadailyusa.com