Warren Mok, a tenor and opera performer, gives a speech during the event. Photo Provided To China Daily

Hedin, a retired editor from Kingston, New York, used to work for Zhuhai Special Zone Daily for several years.

He is now an advisor of the city's English website cityofzhuhai.com. Hedin attached great importance to news spreading.

"No one I spoke to back in the US had heard of the Maritime Silk Road. Not only that, but a fellow traveler whose company deals with two firms in Zhuhai also asked what it was," he said. He called for teacher exchanges between Maritime Silk Road countries, a Greater Bay Speakers Bureau that spins its speakers off to community groups, and a Maritime Road News Service that promotes human-interest stories, according to a report on cityofzhuhai.com. "Not just infrastructure, deals, politics, and statistics," he was quoted as saying.

Zhang Zhi'an, dean of the School of Communication and Design at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, said that city image promotion should be a kind of city storytelling that the public will participate extensively in via such platforms as social media and the internet.

"Zhuhai has rich choices of popular scenic spots as well as big events including the annual China International Circus Festival, the biennial Airshow China and the international communication forum, which can be capitalized on for the public to integrate their personal feelings and narrate their city stories from their personal perspectives," he said.

Angus Deaton, 2015 Nobel Prize laureate in economic sciences and professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton University, said he was deeply impressed by the rapid development of the Bay Area. The Bay Area is a beautiful region and is expected to become a new engine of world economic development and an innovation center of science and technology, he was quoted by local media as saying.

Deaton said Zhuhai is a beautiful city with many scenic spots and has done a good job in developing its tourism industry, adding that he will recommend the city as a tourism destination to his friends.

David Gosset, founder of the Europe-China Forum, said Zhuhai's peerless advantage lies in its good geographical position to Hong Kong and Macao which offers opportunities for the city to expand cooperation with the two Chinese special administrative regions and develop its economy.