Zheng Shanjie, secretary of the CPC Ningbo Municipal Committee, addresses the Global Ningbo Community and Development Partnership Conference held in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province on Nov 16. [Photo by Xiang Wenjian/chinadaily.com.cn]

A conference gathering roughly 780 guests from 25 countries and regions worldwide, including government officials, business executives, experts and scholars, was held in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province on Nov 16. 

The conference witnessed the signing of 35 deals worth 152.8 billion yuan ($22.3 billion), with scopes spanning the fields including smart manufacturing, biomedicine, new energy, modern service and marine engineering. 

The event came as part of the city's broader push to shine a spotlight on the accomplishments it has achieved over the past four decades and accumulate more efforts  in seeking development in the wave of the country's new round of reform and opening-up. 

A major part of its attendees were the luminaries from the Ningbo Bang, which refers to a group of businessmen who were born in Ningbo but moved and lived out of the city. Usually they started business from scratch and achieved success.

Statistics show that from 1984 to 2017, Ningbo Bang had donated 2 billion yuan to their hometown, contributing remarkably to the city's development in terms of culture, education, health care as well as talent cultivation. 

Over the same period, more than 8,100 businesses invested by overseas Chinese landed in Ningbo, with value topping $50 billion, the majority of which were from the Ningbo Bang.