Wang Jian, founder of Alibaba Cloud and an adviser for Xuelang Town, speaks at the 2019 New-gen Manufacturing Conference in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, on May 10. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Wang Jian, founder of Alibaba Cloud and an adviser for Xuelang Town, was surprised to see the rapid development in Xuelang Town that had happened since last year's conference.

"The establishment of Xuelang Town gave the world not a new 'town' but a new 'time'— digital time, which makes 'data' a new resource for industrial production and will make manufacturing the next generation of the internet."

Covering an area of 35,000 square kilometers, Xuelang Town was co-established by the Wuxi municipal government and tech giant Alibaba Group in 2017 to accelerate the integration of manufacturing and internet by combining investment capital, platforms and technologies while promoting mutual development.

A roundtable discussion is held focusing on the development of industry and internet in Xuelang Town. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Themed around "New industrialists, New plants, New industrial dream", the two-day conference consisted of one main summit, an exhibition on intelligent manufacturing technology and about 20 sub-forums for discussing issues faced by Chinese manufacturing companies regarding digitization, networking and intelligence.

The final of the Xuelang Industrial Data Intelligence Challenge was also held during the conference, looking for the "best brain" in the industrial internet business. The winner, "66DA", took home a whopping 150,000 yuan ($22,000) after competing against 651 other teams.