Wuzhen (China), Oct 20 (IANS): The sixth World Internet Conference opened on Sunday in the river town of Wuzhen in east China's Zhejiang province.

With the theme of "Intelligent Interconnection for Openness and Cooperation -- Building a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace," the three-day conference will bring together more than 1,500 participants from over 80 countries and regions, including members of the Internet Hall of Fame, Nobel laureates and Turing Award winners, Xinhua reported.

Executives from major tech companies, like Microsoft, Qualcomm, Alibaba Group and Huawei, will share their insight on future of the internet at 20 sub-forums, covering popular and cutting-edge topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), 5G and industrial digitisation.

During the conference, reports on China and world internet development will be released to forecast the future trend. The reports will review global internet development over the past five decades and the history of Chinese internet during the last 25 years.

Around 15 top scientific and technological projects in internet will also be unveiled, covering AI, 5G, Big Data, Cloud computing, digital manufacturing, industrial internet and other internet-related fields.

The number of internet users in China hit 854 million in June 2019, with the internet availability rate reaching 61.2 per cent, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.