2026 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit highlights AI integration, open-source innovation

The 2026 World Internet Conference (WIC) Wuzhen Summit highlighted the accelerating integration of the internet and artificial intelligence (AI), as AI-related software and hardware took center stage and open-source innovation emerged as key topics.

The event was held in Wuzhen Town, east China's Zhejiang Province from Monday to Thursday under the theme "Open Source and Openness, Joint Contribution and Shared Benefits -- Jointly Building a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace." The event has been held for 13 consecutive years since 2014, during which the internet has undergone intelligent transformation and systemic leaps.

The "Light of the Internet" Expo, a flagship event for the four-day summit, drew 671 companies and institutions from 54 countries and regions, showcasing more than 1,000 new products and technologies, with over 20 products making their debut. AI-related software and hardware products were the undisputed protagonists this year.

Chinese supercomputer manufacturer Sugon brought Dawning 8000 (Dengfeng), China's first homegrown 100,000-card artificial intelligence supercluster, to the event. Completed and put into operation in July this year, the supercluster has made a core breakthrough not simply in its scale but also in its ability to bring together two approaches to computing -- supercomputing and AI computing, on a unified infrastructure. This enables it to handle both high-precision scientific simulations and large-scale AI model training and interference.

"As AI models grow larger, we need greater computing power to support model training. To achieve such an engineering goal, we actually need many new technologies. This is our latest cooling technology. Through what we call immersion liquid-cooled phase-change cooling method, on the one hand, we improve computing density through more efficient cooling capacity, while on the other hand, it can also save energy through natural cooling," said Li Bin, senior vice president of Sugon.

He Xinghuang, deputy editor-in-chief and general manager of Culture and Content Business Department of Chinese internet giant Tencent, demonstrated how the company's WorkBuddy tool can turn casually shot video clips into an animated video, based on its open-source Hunyuan model.

"Now I put these casually shot video clips into WorkBuddy's workspace and give it instructions, then it generates an animated video, adding texts, creating animation effects and extracting keywords in the clips. Its technical base is our Hunyuan multimodal large model, which is open source," said Xinghuang.

Open source and shared benefits were the overarching topics of this year's WIC. Open source means opening up the resources behind AI large models so that more people can participate, promoting AI technological innovation, industrial development and scenario applications, and enabling AI to empower all industries.

Open source is not just about releasing code, but more importantly, it is about building an ecosystem. Bridging the digital divide and achieving the inclusivity of AI technology through open-source approaches is the driving force behind the continued development of the global AI ecosystem.

"The future of AI must be inclusive, which means large models cannot be monopolized by few giants. Open-source large models play a very important role in this course. We believe that in the era of large models, China's open-source community is gradually taking over the open-source banner from other countries to innovate and lead the new wave of open-source progress," said Wei Tao, vice president and chief technology security officer of Alibaba's fintech arm Ant Group.

2026 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit highlights AI integration, open-source innovation

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Competition in the global automotive industry has shifted from a contest of scale to a multi-dimensional coordination of capabilities, a new report released at the ninth Hongqiao International Economic Forum said on Thursday, which called for a more collaborative global industry ecosystem.   Titled "Global Automotive Competitiveness Report 2026," the study was unveiled at the parallel session "Free and Fair Trade and Industrial Competitiveness Cooperation" of the Hongqiao Forum, held as part of the ninth China International Import Expo (CIIE).

The report constructs an evaluation framework for the international competitiveness of the automotive industry consisting of five dimensions -- industrial foundation, technological innovation, market competitiveness, global resource allocation, and environmental support -- and 29 indicators. Based on calculations and comparisons across 41 major countries worldwide, the report concludes that global automotive competition has evolved from a scale-based competition to a multi-dimensional coordination of capabilities.   It calls for efforts to foster a new global automotive industry ecosystem featuring more coordinated supply chains, more inclusive technology, more open trade, more mutually beneficial investment, and more synergistic governance.

"The automotive industry has evolved from traditional fuel vehicles to new energy vehicles and now to intelligent connected vehicles, and its entire competitive logic is undergoing fundamental changes. The previous set of evaluation and analysis indicators, characterized by scale and output value, can hardly adapt to or explain the new competitiveness. The iteration and upgrading of the automotive industry, including the opening of new market space, require better coordination and cooperation," said Tang Yunyi, deputy director of the Institute of Applied Economics of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

The idea that global auto competition is now a contest of coordinated capabilities rather than sheer scale is finding an echo among the automakers that have built their China businesses on competition and cooperation alike. 

For companies like Mercedes-Benz, which has spent decades manufacturing and selling in the world's largest car market, the report's core argument that lasting advantage lies in coordination mirrors a conviction already embedded in its own approach to the country.

"I believe, as a German company, in this true collaboration driving long-term value creation. And it is based on rules, fair competition, and therefore, we are very much looking forward to the next chapter here in China," said Oliver Thone, a board member of Mercedes-Benz Group AG.

The ninth Hongqiao International Economic Forum, running at the National Exhibition and Convention Center under the theme "Stability and Cooperation: Building an Open World Economy Together," brings together business leaders and representatives from around the world to explore paths to a more open global economy, alongside a series of parallel sessions and report releases.

The forum is running alongside the ninth China International Import Expo (CIIE), which opened in Shanghai the same day, drawing more than 4,100 overseas exhibitors from 148 countries and regions. First held in 2018 as the world's first national-level expo dedicated to imports, the CIIE has since evolved into a vital gateway for foreign businesses seeking access to China's vast consumer and industrial markets.

Shanghai forum unveils new framework for global auto industry competitiveness