Visitors at the 11th China Smart City and Intelligent Economy Expo held in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/cnnb.com.cn]

The 2022 World Digital Economy Conference & 12th China Smart City and Intelligent Economy Expo will be held in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province from Sept 2 to 4, local media reported.

The three-day event, which will be held both online and offline, will include a main forum, an expert consultation session, six themed forums, and nine parallel forums. Topics related to 5G, the metaverse, artificial intelligence, carbon neutrality and digital villages will be discussed at these events.

Scholars and experts from the digital economy field including Pan Yunhe, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Thomas Sargent, a Nobel laureate in economics and a researcher at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and Guo Dongming, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of Dalian University of Technology, will speak at the opening ceremony.

Apart from meetings, an offline exhibition will be staged. Covering an area of 25,000 square meters, the exhibition includes four exhibition halls for digital economy, smart manufacturing, smart cities and information consumption, as well as future industries.

In addition, a permanent pavilion displaying Ningbo's innovations in smart manufacturing will be inaugurated during the expo. On the sidelines of the expo, activities including new product releases and innovation and venture contests will also be held.

The expo has been held in Ningbo every year since its inception in 2011 and has become a significant platform promoting cooperation and exchange in smart city construction and intelligent economy in China.