On October 12, 2018, the Forum on Cooperation for Culture and Tourism of the World's Canal Cities was held in Yangzhou, China, where mayors from the world's major canal cities and experts from international cultural organizations engaged in discussion dedicated to the theme of "Development and Cooperation of Canal Cities in the Cultural Tourism Industry." Attendees made the clear proposal of development of the canal cultural tourism that the protection and inheritance of the Grand Canal culture should dominate and prevail over its development for commercial purposes.
Ning Zhizhong, chief planner of the Tourism Research and Planning Center in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, captured the necessity of the canal tourism industry with the "use and disuse theory." Attendees took the Otaru Canal and the Dalsland Canal as examples to discuss the canal tourism landscape around the world and to provide the World Canal Cities Forum with a variety of ideas and wisdom.
The "Yangzhou Initiative for Communication and Cooperation in the Canal-related Cultural Tourism Industry" was adopted as a consensus on the usage and inheritance of the canal resources and as a strategic plan for the sustainable development of the canal-related cultural tourism. For the future efforts to promote international exchanges of cultural tourism, the WCCO will encourage connection, sharing and cooperation in cultural tourism in a bid to make the receipt of recommendations from others a positive norm; this would be a legendary story concerning canals worldwide.