The three-day 2022 World Digital Economy Conference and the 12th Smart City and Intelligent Economy Expo is held in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, from Sept 2 to 4. The conference focuses on high-quality supernormal development of the digital economy based on “Digital Drive, Intelligence Development”. Fruitful results have been achieved through “1+7” online and offline theme events, including the opening ceremony, theme forums, exhibitions, industrial docking, Information Consumption Day, Innovation and Design Week, results release, and digital and intellectual innovation.

The conference creates a panoramic display window of the digital economy industry in “online + offline”, “real + virtual” and “intensive + perennial” forms. During the conference, more than 150 top experts, scholars and entrepreneurs at home and abroad deliver keynote speeches, touching on cutting-edge trends and innovative ideas of the digital economy. A total of 220 enterprises participate in the offline exhibition covering an area of 25,000 square meters, and nearly 1,200 enterprises appear online, jointly displaying the latest technologies and achievements of the digital economy. A number of scenario applications such as 5G + industrial Internet, industrial brain, future factory, blockchain, digital twin and metaverse, as well as the competitiveness report of China’s Top 100 enterprises in the electronic information industry and other research results are released successively. More than 12 million people visit the exhibition online or offline, bringing about a batch of collaborations. During the opening ceremony, 70 projects were signed, amounting to 35.8 billion yuan. At the same time, a series of industrial docking and application promotion activities have been organized for cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence, metaverse, industrial brain, industrial Internet, and intelligent sensing to promote precise docking of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain and between regions.

After years of cultivation and development, the World Digital Economy Conference and Smart City and Intelligent Economy Expo has increasingly grown into an important “industry vane”, “achievement display window”, “cooperation source”, “innovation incubator” and “science and technology pool” in the field of digital economy development and smart city construction.

As the venue for this conference, Ningbo is among the first batch of cities in China to implement intelligent manufacturing and “5G + industrial Internet”. Now, with the goal of building itself into a global capital of intelligent manufacturing and innovation, Ningbo is vigorously pushing the high-quality supernormal development of the digital economy and striving to serve as a benchmark city for the high-quality development of the digital economy in China.

This conference highlights delivering benefits to everyone. Through various opening scenarios and interactions, the achievements of digitization are visible and tangible. In the double-line exhibition, “novel and strange” intelligent experience in the field of the digital economy, which includes new experiences in the virtual and real metaverse, digitized virtual humans, robot coffee kiosk, intelligent ultrasound images and so on, vividly spread and promote the achievements of the digital development that benefit people. A series of themed activities such as “2022 Ningbo Information Consumption Experience Day”, “2022 Ningbo Innovation Design Week” and "Children’s Science and Technology Research” are successfully held at the same time. A large number of “5G information consumption coupons” and “digital RMB red packets” are jointly issued, which attract the attention and participation of massive citizens and college, primary and secondary school students. All these events further display and popularize achievements of digital and intelligent technologies, products and applications, and deliver a new and better life to everyone in the era of the digital economy.