Leaders of Xinwu district and Alibaba Cloud Computing Ltd sign a strategic partnership agreement on August 1 in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. [Photo/chinadaliy.com.cn]

Wuxi's new smart town will be powered by an internet of things platform built by a subsidiary of Chinese tech giant Alibaba, according to an agreement signed by the company and the government of Wuxi's Xinwu district on August 1.

The city in East China's Jiangsu province plans to transform Hongshan—a township of 60,000 people in Xinwu district—into China's first IoT town.

The town is designed not only to become a hub for Xinwu district's rapidly growing IoT industry—the number of IoT companies in the district grew to more than 1,000 in 2015 from just 160 in 2010—but also to be a true smart town, with internet of things technology integrated into the area's health care, transport and tourism infrastructure.

Alibaba Cloud will help Hongshan extract the maximum benefit from this technology by building its Feifeng IoT Platform in the town.