On June 29, the 22nd China International Software Expo, a highly professional and internationalized industry event in the Chinese software industry, kicked off in Beijing.

This event, jointly hosted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China and the Municipal People's Government of Beijing, comprehensively demonstrates the achievements of China's software production in supporting the strategy of strengthening the power of the country and serving the people.

Focusing on the theme of "New Era, New Idea, New Software", the expo has seven exhibition areas, five summit forums, an industrial internet security elite invitational tournament, 21 parallel forums and a "Software Night" event.

The New Journey for the Software Industry area showed the industry's developmental history and accomplishments, while the Technology Innovation Center and International Achievements area displayed innovative feats by software companies. At the scene, enterprises such as 58.com, Baidu, Ironman, Kingsoft Office, JD, iFlytek, Piesat, Face++, NetEase, ThunderSoft, Goodwill and TINAVI Medical Technologies demonstrated examples of their black technology, creations far more advanced than those currently available in the market. In addition, products in cloud computing, big data, internet of things, artificial intelligence, blockchain, virtual reality and other technical areas were showcased in the Advanced Technology Innovation exhibition area, highlighting common technology as well as industry-leading and breakthrough creations. In the Software Supports the Power Strategy exhibition area, industrial software and internet platforms were shown, with a focus on software support for China as a manufacturing and internet power and for the real economy. And under Software Serves the China Plan, China's domestic operating systems, databases, middleware, office software manufacturers, and domestic independent software technology, products and solutions were shown. The Software Serves the Society and Livelihoods exhibition attracted a lot of visitors. It showed how software and technology products relate to people's lives in the fields of education, medical treatment, transportation, tourism and intelligent cities. Here, autonomous vehicles, which included four modules of positioning, perception, intelligent decision and control, can realize high-precision vehicle detection and recognition, tracking, as well as distance and speed estimation. The exhibition area has a smart speaker named Ding Dong, which requires no hands-on operation or accessories to be worn and can be directly awakened only through the phrase "Ding Dong Ding Dong" before conducting voice interactions with people. The software empowerment innovation and entrepreneurship exhibition area highlighted popularity, intelligence and innovation, and enhanced the sense of participation, experience and acquisition among audiences.

The topics of the five forums are "New Era, New Idea, New Software", "Digital Economy Leads to Intelligent Future", "Industrial Internet, Intelligent Future", "AI for a Better Future" and "Big Data Enables the Real Economy". Speakers include academicians and experts, heads of big domestic companies, senior executives of multinational corporations and internationally renowned scholars.

The 21 parallel forums are organized around topics such as blockchain, cloud services, open source software, the Belt and Road Initiative and intellectual property protection, and are presented in keynote speeches and roundtable forums. Among them, the International Forum on International Cooperation in the Next-Generation Information Technology Industry and the International Forum on Innovation and Integration of the Internet of Things will be attended by international experts and scholars from the United States, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand and Portugal.

Additionally, the software expo will also publish a list of top 100 companies with comprehensive competitiveness in China's software and information technology service sector, and the Industrial and Information Blue Book (2017-2018), along with other research results.

The software expo is highly international. In addition to inviting more than 20 guest speakers from other countries, the expo has also organized international forums and matchmaking activities in English and directed invitations to government delegations from countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as officials of the Chinese embassies of 11 countries including Finland, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Malaysia.