Some 70 Chinese companies that stand out as global giants with a sales volume of $500 billion and manage $1 trillion in total will be coming to Istanbul today. The delegation of businesspeople, executives and investors of important sectors from food to technology, from automotive to aviation will attend the "One Belt One Road - Let's Steer the Future Together" conference to be hosted by the state-run Yunus Emre Institute under the auspices of the Presidency.

Many world-renowned brands will be attending the event to be held in Istanbul, including China's largest airline Air China, the world's largest dairy producer YILI, film company 21st Century Fox, China's biggest social media platform YIDIAN, computer company Lenovo, luxury car brand Infinity, computer firm HP, chip manufacturer Qualcomm, and internet giant Alibaba. During the conference organized with the intent of increasing Turkish-Chinese cultural interaction and improving the capacity of economic, commercial and technological cooperation, concrete projects planned to be carried out between the companies of the two countries will be discussed. Chinese companies will also be invited to invest in Turkey at the conference which will in turn benefit the country's tourism sector.

Yunus Emre Institute President Şeref Ateş said they have a broad international network with 56 cultural centers in 43 countries and 139 contact points in more than 60 countries, adding they introduce Turkey's language, culture, academic and scientific capacity in these regions. Noting that the institute serves as a versatile bridge between China and Turkey, Ateş said opinion leaders, journalists and artists, who were previously brought to Turkey for the "Be Our Guest" project, are now working to bring more tourists to the country. "The number of Chinese tourists rose by 97 percent in 2018," he continued. "We expect this figure to break a record by exceeding 400,000. With these activities, we can achieve our target of 1 million Chinese tourists in a short time."