The development of the financial industry directly affects the sustainable competitiveness of a city and even an economic region, and the development of urban finance helps to enhance the sustainable competitiveness of a city. This paper firstly reviews the relevant theories of sustainable urban competitiveness and explains the impact mechanism of financial development on sustainable urban competitiveness in developing regions. It then draws on the data of 17 prefecture-level cities in Central China from 2006 to 2020. It uses quantitative research methods, such as principal component analysis and regression analysis, to analyse and study the factors of financial development that influence sustainable urban competitiveness, thus realising the research purpose of enhancing sustainable urban competitiveness. After an in-depth analysis, the paper draws the following conclusions: (1) financial development is conducive to improving the sustainable competitiveness of a city in developing regions; and (2) the local government should focus not only on expanding the scale of financial development, but also on the quality of financial development, adjusting the financial structure, improving financial efficiency, and actively promoting the opening of financial markets and innovation of financial products.

So far nearly 110 billion pieces of express items have been handled by Chinese express delivery industry, with an average annual growth of 200%. Cross-belt sorting system serves as the most important express item sorting system and most of the sorting work has been automated fulfilled. However, operators are still needed and working pressure arisen with the growth of express items. Under the context of the industry 5.0, new technologies should be utilized to enhance both welfare of the workers and working efficiency of the cross-belt system. However, it’s hard to strike a good balance between express item handling efficiency and the happiness of operators. Digital twin technology bring new solution to this problem. Based on the ascertained human-machine features of the distribution center, the human-machine integration digital twin frame, consisting of physical space, virtual space, twin data center and supporting & application services, were proposed. The closed-loop interactions among biological human body, virtual human body, virtual equipment and physical equipment were achieved. The express item distribution center operation system was established based on the digital twin technologies. Besides, the physical-level data collection and storage, the human body fatigue efficiency conversion process on services levels and the virtual-level predication & decision-making were elaborated. Finally, methods to establish the cross-belt sorting system for the express item distribution center based on digital twin technologies were proposed. Feasibility of the aforesaid methods was verified by a simulation case study.

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