The 2025 Global Internet Competition of "Straight to Wuzhen" award ceremony was held in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang province on Sunday.

Six grand prizes, six first prizes, 18 second prizes and 30 third prizes were awarded out of the 71 projects in the finals, according to the official WeChat account of the World Internet Conference. This year's competition collected 1,082 entries from 29 countries and regions around the world.

The open source projects for individuals attracted 632 developers, with eight recipients given the most valuable contributor award.

As a signature event of the World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, the Global Internet Competition of "Straight to Wuzhen" is in its 7th year. Over the previous six editions, a total of 252 projects have stood out.

The event this year featured six key tracks — artificial intelligence, intelligent connected mobility, intelligent digital healthcare, intelligent manufacturing, smart terminal, and open source projects.

Wang Jingtao, deputy director of the Cyberspace Administration of China, Ren Xianliang, secretary-general of the World Internet Conference, and Zhao Cheng, head of the publicity department of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China attended the event and presented trophies and certificates of merit to representatives of the winning projects.

Senior Chinese officials on cyberspace and law on Sunday called for precisely setting legal "red lines and high lines", along with ethics guidelines and technical standards, to ensure artificial intelligence develops in a safe, reliable, and controllable direction.

They made the remarks at a sub-forum on law-based cyberspace governance during the World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province.

Li Mingzheng, vice-minister of justice, said AI — "a strategic technology driving a new round of scientific and industrial transformation" — has brought both opportunities and risks.

"AI technology cannot deviate from the direction of human civilizational progress," Li said, adding that development and security must be advanced in a coordinated way.

"While promoting continuous innovation and breakthroughs, we must proactively guard against and address potential risks, ensuring AI develops in a safe, reliable, and controllable manner," he said.

He added that China will "grasp the trends and patterns of AI development, precisely set legal red lines and high lines, and give full play to the safeguarding role of the rule of law."

AI governance, Li noted, is a complex systems project that requires the participation of government, industry, academia, research institutions, and the public.

Yang Jianwen, deputy director of the Cyberspace Administration of China, said AI is profoundly reshaping production and daily life, driving revolutionary advances in productivity and deep structural change.

At the same time, he cautioned, new technical risks such as data security gaps, algorithmic bias, and deepfakes have emerged, extending into social, ethical, and legal challenges.

To meet these challenges, Yang called for continuously improving the legal and policy framework for AI, refining ethics guidelines for research, development, and application, and accelerating the formulation of technical standards in key fields.

He also urged stronger enforcement against illegal or abusive uses of AI, improving law-enforcement measures suited to AI's development and governance, fully leveraging industry self-discipline, and building a multi-stakeholder, collaborative governance system.

The officials said China will continue to promote an ecosystem in which innovation is encouraged and risks are effectively managed, so that AI can better serve economic development, social governance, and people's well-being.

According to the WHO, 15 percent of the global population lives with disabilities — a staggering figure. However, a new generation of innovators is striving to break down barriers for these people through technology. At the 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, China Daily reporter Yan An met two young entrepreneurs making significant strides in this area. Giannina Honorio Heredia from Peru highlighted that sign language is not just a means of communication but also a cultural expression, which inspired her to develop a translation app for people with hearing impairment. João Pedro Novochadlo from Brazil, who has previously helped visually impaired individuals enjoy music festivals through his app, noted that if we turn a blind eye to these issues, we might question who the real "blind" ones are.

Dejan Jakovljevic, chief information officer of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, said China has made "enormous progress" in agriculture and agricultural digitalization during the 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit. Watch the video to learn more.

At the 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, Besik Bugianishvili, CEO of the JSC Development Fund of Georgia (DFG), argued that the most profound application of AI is in actively engineering peace.

At the 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, Besik Bugianishvili, CEO of the JSC Development Fund of Georgia (DFG), described his vision of a world where the best models are applied to shared challenges.

The globally sensational "designer" toy Labubu has topped China's most internationally influential online pop-culture intellectual property in the past year, with blockbuster film Ne Zha 2 close behind, according to a report released on Saturday.

The report, focused on the international communication of Chinese symbols, was unveiled by a Beijing-based think tank Academy of Contemporary China and World Studies at the World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province. It offers a data-driven assessment of how Chinese cultural IPs and local cultural symbols spread overseas over the past year.

According to the ranking, Labubu, the collectible "designer" toy sold by Beijing-based toy-maker Pop Mart, led the top 10 Chinese online pop-culture IPs. A blockbuster film, Dead To Rights, came second, and Ne Zha 2 third.

Other entries in the top 10 include the breakout film Nobody, ranking 7th, and the Chinese game Where Winds Meet, 9th.

The film Dead To Rights is set against the backdrop of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45), telling the story of a group of civilians who took refuge in a photo studio amid wartime chaos and risked their lives to expose the atrocities committed by the invading Japanese army.

Ne Zha 2 reimagined the classic myth, telling the story of the Chinese mythological character Ne Zha and his family and friends as they overcome hardship and stand up to hostile powers.

Releasing the findings, Li Yafang, head of the academy, said those globally resonant Chinese IPs "no longer aim to preach, but use high-quality products and compelling stories" to make the world actively understand China.

The report tracked the performance of Chinese cultural symbols across more than 4,000 mainstream media outlets worldwide, multiple international social platforms and search engines, as well as how they are referenced by leading artificial intelligence models such as DeepSeek and ChatGPT, based on data from November 2024 to September 2025, the think tank said.

Christopher Millward, president and managing director of the United States Information Technology Office, a trade association representing the US information communication technologies industry in China, said there is a lot of alignment between China and the US in AI governance. He made the remarks at the Frontier AI Models Forum, a sub-forum of the 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit on Nov 8.

Watch the video to hear more of his insights!

On Nov 9, Maaz Gardezi, Founder of the Living Lab of Virginia Tech University, said at the Digital Agriculture Forum of the 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit that AI should enable a better quality of life and make human judgment thrives.

On Nov 9, Dejan Jakovljevic, CIO and Director, Digital FAO and Agroinformatics Division of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, said at the Digital Agriculture Forum of the 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit that FAO is looking forward to collaborating with China in facilitating the sharing of knowledge, technology and innovation.

Jun Murai, a professor at Keio University in Japan, was honored with the Distinguished Contribution Award at the 2025 World Internet Conference (WIC) Wuzhen Summit. This award recognizes his pioneering achievements and lifelong dedication to the development of the global internet.

In a video message, Murai expressed his deep gratitude for the recognition, emphasizing that the honor belongs not only to him but also to the many colleagues and collaborators who have shaped the evolution of the internet. Reflecting on his early research in distributed computing system in the late 1970s and his collaboration with Chinese scholars in the 1980s, Murai highlighted the shared history that has helped shape today's digital world.

He lauded the WIC as a vital bridge connecting East and West, past and future, and noted that the internet has become essential infrastructure for a new era-driving artificial intelligence and innovation across sectors.

Murai called for collective global efforts to innovate, secure, and sustain the new internet, highlighting the Asia-Pacific region's dynamic role as a powerful engine for future digital development.

Lacina Koné, director-general and CEO of Smart Africa, has been honored with the 2025 World Internet Conference (WIC) Distinguished Contribution Award.

As a leading advocate for Africa's digital transformation, Koné has played a central role in promoting the vision of Smart Africa—to build a single, inclusive and sovereign digital market across the continent. He has worked to strengthen digital public infrastructure, harmonize data governance and empower local innovation through policy and smart investment.

Koné said the award represents a shared commitment to collaboration and innovation, reminding the world that "when we connect, collaborate and co-create, we can shape a digital future that leaves no one behind."

He also recognized the WIC as an important platform linking regional champions with global partners to advance cooperation in innovation, regulation and AI ethics.

Werner Zorn, widely considered "the Father of the Internet in Germany", has been honored with the 2025 World Internet Conference (WIC) Distinguished Contribution Award.

As a pioneer who has witnessed and participated in the transformative journey of the internet in China, Zorn has stood at the forefront of technological evolution, observing the growth of an industry that has become a cornerstone of modern life. He said he was fortunate to experience "a boom of modern Chinese e-commerce, which is almost breathtaking, for its speed of development, and a wide range of reach in areas like retail and full-stack logistics."

He also praised the WIC for serving as a platform that promotes the continued development of internet technology and its benefits for daily life. He expressed confidence that the WIC will continue to play an essential role in fulfilling its mission — that is: using the internet to make life better for everyone.

US computer scientist Robert Kahn, co-inventor of the TCP/IP foundation protocol of the internet and widely regarded as the father of the internet, was honored at the 2025 World Internet Conference (WIC) Wuzhen Summit.

He received the WIC Distinguished Contribution Award for his groundbreaking contributions and lifelong efforts in shaping the modern internet.

In a video message to the award ceremony, Kahn expressed his deep gratitude to the WIC and shared reflections on the internet's evolution. He recounted his groundbreaking work and emphasized that collaboration across borders remains vital.

"The internet could not have succeeded to the extent that it has without the help and encouragement of so many others in industry, academia and government around the world," he said, indicating that cooperation is essential to the development of the global internet.

AI can provide customized advice for farmers, enabling users to seek agricultural knowhow through chat interfaces on mobile application about "how to change and apply fertilizer according to the conditions at that point of time," said Parmesh Shah, the global lead of Data-driven Digital Agriculture of World Bank during the 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit.

Dai Yan contributed to the video.

China has taken the top spot in 6G patent applications around the world, accounting for 40.3 percent of the global total, according to a report released by the Chinese Academy of Cyberspace Studies at the 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit.

The China Internet Development Report 2025 found that, by 2030, the market scale of China's 6G industry is expected to exceed 1.2 trillion yuan ($168.5 billion), with applications in the industrial internet occupying 40 percent and smart cities taking up 30 percent.

The report said that, as of the end of June 2025, China had built a total of 4.55 million 5G base stations, with 1.12 billion 5G mobile phone users nationwide.

China's artificial intelligence industry continues to demonstrate strong momentum. The country holds the largest number of AI-related patents globally, accounting for 60 percent of the world's total.

The report noted that the development of computing power centers has also been substantially enhanced. As of the end of June 2025, China had 10.85 million standard racks in operation nationwide, with its intelligent computing power reaching 788 EFLOPS, ranking among the top in the world.

An EFLOP is a unit that measures the speed of computer systems and is equal to one quintillion floating-point operations per second.

The World Internet Development Report 2025, which was also released at the summit, said China continues to lead the world in the development of communication networks, providing a solid foundation for internet advancement.

In terms of technological innovation, China has achieved a series of breakthroughs in cutting-edge technologies, such as AI and quantum communications, with steady progress made in industrial application.

Xianyu, Chinese tech heavyweight Alibaba Group's online trading platform for secondhand goods, is accelerating steps to leverage artificial intelligence technology to improve the transaction efficiency of idle goods.

Ding Jian, president of Xianyu, said the essence of idle goods trading lies in reallocating underused social resources to those who need them, adding that the company aims to elevate the matching efficiency of transactions based on the multimodal understanding capabilities of Alibaba's Qwen large models.

Ding made the remarks at the 2025 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, which ended on Sunday in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province.

The company is scrambling to integrate cutting-edge technologies with the secondhand goods transaction platform and has built proprietary AI functions that can realize the precise understanding of product content and pricing, he said.

During the summit, Xianyu showcased two new AI applications which are targeted at improving the platform's AI service capabilities for buyers.

The AI-powered smart search leverages interactive searches to better understand users' needs and purchasing preferences, with the aim of matching suitable items and sellers with buyers and providing detailed shopping advices.

The AI market insights function uses the platform's real transaction data and algorithms to provide users with price references and supply-demand trends in the market.

Ding said Xianyu's AI applications are currently used by 45 million customers, with the transaction of AI-driven merchandise exceeding 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion). The company has built a comprehensive set of AI agents tailored to the trading scenario of idle goods, integrating AI across the entire transaction chain.

"The West can learn from the longevity thinking of China," Andy Palmer, academician at the Royal Academy of Engineering and co-chair of the Global Internet Competition "Straight to Wuzhen," said. He said China's ability to have 15 five-year plans is incredible, and this long-term planning has been an outstanding success.