2016年CRI Hangzhou seeks to become international city

Hosting this year's G20 Summit is being viewed by municipal officials in Hangzhou as their best chance to promote the city's image as an international destination.

Professor Chen Jianjun with the School of Public Affairs at Zhejiang University says Hangzhou already has a lot to offer.

"The city has the ability to become a global attraction for leisure, sightseeing, international conferences and exhibitions, in addition to Hangzhou's position as a global center for the Internet industry. The city is also focusing on developing its cultural creativity industry."

Officials say they hope Hangzhou can not only attract more investment and business opportunities, but also more high-level, talented professionals from other countries.

Lucas Rondez, a Swiss businessman who has lived in China for nearly a decade, says the local government's initiatives are already making Hangzhou an appealing destination for foreigners to live in.

"I would love to see more entrepreneurs from abroad choosing Hangzhou as the place to base, maybe not Shanghai and Beijing. Because here is very attractive. There's like a lot of government support. There's a lot of companies which you can talk together, communicate and share experiences. So I would love to see more and more people coming here to start a business."

Lucas Rondez is the CEO of a company which has created an app called "Nihao," or "Hello" in Mandarin 1, which is often the first Chinese phrase foreigners learn to speak.

The app itself is designed to try to make life for foreigners living in China much easier.

Rondez says their concept is to try to make China more accessible to the rest of the world.

"A lot of people coming to China with a lot of dreams in the mind. I mean it's no longer 'US dreams', more of the 'Chinese dreams' today. So a lot of people come here with a lot of expectation. They don't know maybe exactly what they want to do. So they want to find a path in the career, maybe a way to make a new company, or a start-up."

Apart from the language barriers, Rondez suggests one of the things officials in Hangzhou might focus on is making the service sector 2 more accessible to foreigners.

"I think we are really at the beginning. It takes time to make a city well known abroad. I think through the G20, through the Asian Games. It is the best way. It's definitely the incredible way to make it well known abroad. But I think on the infrastructure 3, on the opportunities and everything. We are at the early beginning to make the city more international."

Zhejiang is known within China as being one of the cradles of this country's burgeoning 4 private sector.

Nearly 140 out of China's top 500 private companies are located in Zhejiang.

Over 6 million merchants from the province are doing business across China, while almost 2 million others are doing business in different parts of the world.

For CRI, I'm Xie Cheng.