When the city of Guiyang, Guizhou province, and the city of Seoul, South Korea signed a memorandum on cooperation, on Oct 31, Guiyang's Party secretary, Liu Wenxin, remarked that Guiyang has been a leader among the capital cities in China in GDP growth thanks to the restructuring of traditional industries, pharmaceuticals, and big data and the Internet plus.

Liu pointed to the number of governmental exchanges and communications with Seoul and stronger trade and economic cooperation than added that Guiyang can use South Korea's experience and practices in smart city development, big data and information technology.

Cha Sung Soo, the head of the Geumcheon-gu area of Seoul, spoke about how impressive Guiyang's natural resources and folk culture are and about its tremendous potential in emerging industries, including data and health care and of how he hopes to strengthen cooperation in information technology, big data and tourism.