Themed on "Connectivity and Shared Prosperity", the World Internet Conference Digital Silk Road Development Forum will be held on April 16 in Xi'an, Northwest China's Shaanxi province.

Thousands of years ago, Chinese ancestors pioneered the Silk Road connecting Asia, Europe and Africa, as well as maritime Silk Road bridging the East and the West, exploring new path for human civilization exchanges.

Now, as the digital economy becomes an important engine behind global industrial development and transformation, the co-building of a Digital Silk Road has become a hot topic in promoting the Belt and Road cooperation.

"Digital Villages and Sustainable Development" is a key agenda of the forum. The participants will engage in discussions on such topics as leveraging digital technology to empower agricultural production, promoting the improvement of rural governance, and contributing wisdom and strength to rural development, poverty eradication, and the building of more efficient, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable digital villages globally.

"Silk Road E-commerce International Cooperation" is a key agenda of the forum.

Xi'an has accelerated building itself into a Silk Road e-commerce hub. At present, there are more than 320 cross-border e-commerce enterprises in the China (Shaanxi) Pilot Free Trade Zone, and the transaction volume has exceeded 10.2 billion yuan, according to Li Qungang, deputy director general of the commerce bureau of Xi'an, at a press conference on the development of the China (Shaanxi) Pilot Free Trade Zone.

For thousands of years, the Silk Road has forged new path facilitating exchanges among different countries, something it continues to do for countries along the Silk Road, achieving higher-quality development and common prosperity.

The host city of the WIC Digital Silk Road Development Forum, Xi'an, has made significant strides in deepening the Belt and Road cooperation. In 2023, Shaanxi projected that the province's digital economy expected to reach a scale of 1.4 trillion yuan, while Xi'an, the starting point of the ancient Silk Road, saw the added value of its core digital economic industries accounting for over 9 percent of its GDP the same year.

Through this forum, the WIC will continue to build a global platform for communication and cooperation, deepening exchanges and collaboration among countries and regions involved in the BRI in digital technology, digital infrastructure, and digital markets, so as to bridge the digital divide and jointly build a community with a shared future in cyberspace.

Stay tuned for more forum updates, which will bring you highlights of the Digital Silk Road development.