Themed “Accelerating Innovation-oriented Development of Digitally Enabled Technology, Pressing ahead with Digital China Initiative”, the 9th Digital China Summit was held in Fuzhou, Fujian Province from April 29 till 30. 

Compared with the previous sessions, this year’s summit performed the best in the following six aspects. 

This year’s event enjoyed the largest scale. More than 50 sub-forums and exchange activities have been well planned and launched in the latest summit, the most compared with the previous sessions. The Digital China Innovation Competition set up a total of 14 categories, and attracted the participation of 33,000 contestants, outperforming all the previous sessions. 

The degree of participation by enterprises was the highest. Sub-forums were sponsored by private businesses such as Huawei and Ant Group for the first time in the summit. Sub-forums hosted by enterprises comprised over 55%, more than 65% of speeches were delivered by business guests, and the number of business representatives accounted for nearly 75% of all guests. All the three figures set new record highs. Approximately 80% of exhibitors in the experience area were enterprises. 

The largest number of achievements were released. This summit witnessed the unveiling of more than 100 influential achievements of all categories, ranging from policies, reports, standards to technological solutions. The best performance was delivered in both the quantity and the quality compared with all the previous sessions. 

The most dynamic industrial matchmaking mechanism was put in place. In the latest digital summit, an industrial capital matchmaking event was launched for the first time, and the innovative “industrial matchmaking cabin” was set up. Moreover, the four-tiered “industry+province+local+cross-region” opportunity list was introduced for the first time to enable project resources to see accurate matchmaking and function well. Till now, more than 500 opportunities have been collected in the list. 

The most plentiful international elements were involved. Exchange activities such as China-ASEAN Digital Transformation and Cooperation, and Fujian Port Digital Economy Cooperation in the digital summit drew the participation of diplomats from seven ASEAN countries, representatives from nine Portuguese-speaking countries under the permanent secretariat of the China-Portugal forum, as well as the attendance of multinationals like Siemens and Tesla (the first time). 

The summit boasted the most stunning interaction and experience. The experience area in the digital summit consisted of five categories and three special sections, where more than 400 exhibitors put on display more than 100 interaction programs, including intelligent robots, digital twin technology, and virtual reality. Events were held in the summit to release new technologies, products and applications. An estimated total of more than 6,000 technologies, products and projects were put on display, more than 65% of which were unveiled for the first time.

65 sites, where digital application scenarios could be observed and emulated, were set up so that visitors could see in an immersive way how “artificial intelligence plus” and “data elements×” seek integration with each other. 

We have learned that the digital summit comprised a total of 23 sub-forums, where multiple special sessions and themed discussions were launched, and more than 50 meetings were held. In the summit, a number of signature and milestone achievements in moving forward with the Digital China Initiative were released collectively, including the Digital China Development Report 2025, China Data Resources Investigation Report and digital China development index. (Text by Yan Xin and Jiang Yachen, Photo by Chen Nuan)