Standing before the glass at the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, Ecuadorian scholar María Imelda Robalino gently traced the edge of the giant city model with her fingertips, her eyes reflecting the orderly contours of this megacity stretching toward the horizon. The clear lines linking green spaces along the city"s iconic Huangpu River, dense residential neighborhoods and industrial parks drew the public administration scholar, who has long studied urban expansion in Latin America, into deep thought.

　　Beside her, Mariana Escalante, a Mexican scholar in China studies, gazed at the scrolling timeline of Shanghai"s long-term urban plans on a screen and expressed her admiration for the CPC and the Chinese government"s all-out efforts in development and construction. "It"s very impressive that they"re taking care of all the factors that influence Chinese people, not just development and the economy, but also the environment and the well-being of the people," she told the Global Times at the exhibition center.

　　In June, a delegation of more than 20 think tank scholars from about 15 Latin American countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Ecuador, started their tour in China. Over the course of more than 10 days, they visited cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing, and went into urban planning exhibition centers, residential communities, Party schools, eco-friendly power plants and university think tanks. Robalino and Escalante were among them. Like many others in the group, they came with a shared purpose: to see for themselves what Chinese modernization under CPC leadership actually looks like.

　　"I always emphasize the importance of seeing and experiencing China with my own eyes, in addition to learning about it through documents, academic research or news reports," Escalante told the Global Times.