Two 4-trillion "twin stars" have joined hands to set their sights on a super track.

According to announcements from "Ningbo Release" and "Hangzhou Release", the fifth municipal joint meeting on the Hangzhou-Ningbo "Twin City Cooperation Initiative" was held in Hangzhou on August 31.

At the meeting, key topics of common concern to both sides included forging a stronger source of innovation, seizing new opportunities in artificial intelligence, building advanced manufacturing clusters, constructing the province's core open hub, promoting the expansion and quality improvement of the service industry and building an international consumption center city, and building a model of Chinese-path modernized city. The meeting also mentioned that taking the co-construction of the Shanghai (Yangtze River Delta) International Science and Technology Innovation Center as an opportunity, the two sides will jointly incubate and cultivate globally leading artificial intelligence enterprises and industrial clusters.

In addition, departments of science and technology, economy and information technology, transportation, commerce, culture, radio, tourism and other relevant departments of the two cities signed cooperation agreements respectively.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the proposal of the Hangzhou-Ningbo "Twin City Cooperation Initiative".

In 2016, this concept was first introduced to the public, and the two major "twin star" cities in Zhejiang launched coordinated development ever since. In 2021, the *Five-Year Action Plan for Implementing the Hangzhou and Ningbo "Twin City Cooperation Initiative"* was issued, and the first municipal joint meeting was held in July of the same year, marking that the twin city coordination had a systematic action guideline and a normalized operation mechanism.

Sorting out the municipal joint meetings over the years, the cooperation logic of the two sides has evolved from the initial stage of infrastructure interconnection and public service sharing, to industrial coordination and institutional innovation, and further upgraded to scientific and technological innovation and the construction of artificial intelligence industrial highland from a global perspective.

In July this year, the main leading officials of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee presided over the work meeting on implementing the Hangzhou-Ningbo "Twin City Cooperation Initiative", encouraging and supporting Hangzhou and Ningbo to better play a pioneering role in achieving "six major breakthroughs", so as to support the smooth realization of the province's 15th Five-Year Plan goals with the leapfrog development of Hangzhou and Ningbo, and make greater contributions to the overall national development.

The meeting also proposed that to further promote the Hangzhou-Ningbo "Twin City Cooperation Initiative", it is necessary to grasp three key orientations: differentiated development, coordinated development and making greater contributions, so as to achieve "sound self-development, sound coordinated interaction and strong supporting and leading performance".

This is regarded as a new signal: the pattern of twin city coordination will move from "win-win cooperation between the two cities" to "leading development of the entire region".

Current regional competition is no longer a logic of going it alone. Hangzhou excels in the digital economy, while Ningbo has a solid foundation in the manufacturing industry, and the development foundations of the two cities are highly complementary.

In 2025, the total GDP of Hangzhou and Ningbo exceeded 4.17 trillion yuan, accounting for more than 44% of Zhejiang's total economic output. In other words, nearly half of Zhejiang's economic volume is tied to these two cities, and whether the two can complement each other's advantages and strengthen their radiation-driven capacity is directly related to the fundamental base of Zhejiang's economy.

However, some experts pointed out that in comparison with higher requirements, there are still not enough landmark measures and achievements in Hangzhou-Ningbo coordination, and the shortcomings are mainly concentrated in the coordination of scientific and technological innovation, co-construction of key industrial chains, and two-way linkage of land and sea corridors.

At present, artificial intelligence is expected to become the most promising connection point between the two cities — Hangzhou's algorithm resources need to find application scenarios, while Ningbo's factories have huge demand for intelligent transformation. This natural complementary relationship is one of the most notable highlights of the two cities in this super industrial track.

With such huge potential for development, what comes next depends on whether the two cities can truly integrate their resources and achieve in-depth coordinated development.

This article is from the WeChat official account "City Evolution", written by LIU Yanmei, and published with authorization by 36Kr.