Praising China | Starting from Wuzhen, we gather together to build a community with a shared future in cyberspace
On November 3, the 2026 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit (hereinafter referred to as the "Wuzhen Summit") opened as scheduled in Wuzhen, Tongxiang City, Zhejiang Province. With the theme of "Open Source, Openness, Co-construction and Sharing-Working Together to Build a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace", it once again gathered the attention of the global Internet field in the Jiangnan water town.
This year is the 13th year that the Wuzhen Summit has been held. A noteworthy change is that for the first time, the summit is open to the public by appointment. The two conference venues in Wuzhen and Puyuan accept reservations from the public. In the past, this international event was more of a platform for dialogue and exchange among experts, scholars, and industry leaders. Now, ordinary residents can also enter the venue and learn about and experience cutting-edge digital applications up close at the Open Source Theme Ecological Experience Hall, "Wuzhen Talk·Open Source Youth Talk" and other sites. The change in the way the conference is held itself shows that open source and openness are moving from the concept of collaboration within the industry to a public practice that ordinary people can participate in and perceive.
Inside and outside the venue, a robot "curator" led the audience, people with mobility impairments stood and walked with the assistance of exoskeleton equipment, self-driving buses, and unmanned retail vehicles shuttled services... The technology moved from the exhibition stand to people's side, not only allowing the dividends of Internet development to benefit more people, but also giving "open source and openness" a concrete appearance, and giving "co-construction and sharing" real weight.
This summit focused on the frontiers of digital intelligence and the development and governance of artificial intelligence and set up 27 sub-forums, a record number in recent years. As an important brand event of the summit, the "Light of the Internet" Expo attracted 671 Chinese and foreign companies and institutions from 54 countries and regions to participate in the exhibition, displaying and releasing more than 1,000 new technologies and new products such as quantum communications, 6G, agents, and large models, more than 20 of which were world premieres. The newness of the topics, the large scale, and the many products are in line with the general trend of digital intelligence development and also respond to global expectations for Internet development and governance. Here, innovative entities from all over the world present on the same stage and exchange ideas. Different technical routes and different application scenarios collide and blend, accelerating the flow of technology, knowledge and innovation resources. Looking at a deeper level, high technology licensing fees and high deployment costs in remote areas, these practical problems that have long restricted the implementation of digital technology, are gradually being solved with the advancement of open source and open source, and more open source innovations can take root in thousands of industries.
Tongxiang, where the Wuzhen Summit is located, is a county-level city, but there are seven AI companies scattered along Wuzhen Avenue, which is only 28 kilometers away, covering a complete industrial chain from computing power, data to applications. Through the digital exploration of a small county, we can not only see the vitality of digital technology spreading to the county, but also get a glimpse of the booming development of China's cyberspace industry. The Internet penetration rate has exceeded 80%, the number of generative artificial intelligence users has exceeded 700 million, the total number of 5G base stations has exceeded 5 million, the proportion of the digital economy in GDP (gross domestic product) has shown a steady growth trend, the infrastructure has become more complete, the user base has become larger, and governance capabilities have improved, etc., which together form a solid soil for the growth of digital innovation.
The development of the Internet has no borders or boundaries. Over the years, the Wuzhen Summit has adhered to multilateralism and the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, and has continued to attract participation from many countries and parties around the world to jointly discuss how to build a globally shared and open Internet. At this summit, the "Join Hands to Build a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace" collection of high-quality cases received 360 applications from 80 countries and regions around the world, and the series of capacity building activities helped developing countries learn experience in open source ecological construction, all of which help to gather the lasting power of bridging the digital intelligence gap with inclusive digital cooperation. The Spring 2026 Global Open Source AI Ecology Report released by Hugging Face, the world's largest AI open source community, shows that in the past year, 41% of large model downloads on the platform came from models developed in China. China has become one of the most active and fastest-growing regions in the world for open source large model supply. As an important contributor and promoter of the open source ecosystem, China is contributing wisdom to the development of the global digital intelligence industry with an open and sharing attitude.
A drop of water in the digital river of Wuzhen reflects the trend of open source and openness of the times; a network cable connects the digital future where we share weal and woe. The dialogue in the small town has gathered global consensus, and the dividends of Internet development have spread across mountains and seas into thousands of households. A cyberspace that is more inclusive, prosperous, peaceful, secure, equal and inclusive is starting from Wuzhen and spreading to the world. (Wei Ping, our commentator)
