The first "Hello, Silk Road" International Conference on Internet Communication will officially start on July 18 in Karamay, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

The six-day event is divided into two parts - field visits and a communication conference. It marks the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) proposed by China and aims at showcasing the achievements of connectivity and cultural exchanges between China and relevant countries, promoting mutual understanding and trust between their peoples and making new contributions to building a community with a shared future for mankind.

Chinese and foreign journalists, as well as online influencers from Belt and Road countries are expected to be invited to join a 5-day visit to Karamay, where they will hit a number of local landmarks including National Highway 217, also known as the Duku Highway, the World Mystery Town, a Yardang scenic area, Wuerhe Town, a tourism complex that gathers B&B hotels and showcases local folk customs, as well as the Karamay River, the world's shortest artificial river and the only one in China built on the Gobi Desert. They will also join a tour to a local industrial park of cloud computing, a film studio and other emerging complexes.

The field visits, designed to demonstrate Xinjiang's achievements in culture, science and technology, social development, as well as economy and trade, will foster a closer people-to-people bond among Belt and Road countries and present a reliable, admirable and respectable China to the rest of the world.

The communication conference to be held on July 23 will draw participation from Zhang Weiwei, Distinguished Professor and Director of the China Institute at Fudan University, Wang Wen, Executive Dean of Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, Ji Deqiang, Vice Dean of the Institute for A Community with Shared Future at Communication University of China, and other experts and scholars of international communication. It will also be joined by representatives from Chinese and foreign mainstream media as well as online influencers.

They will held in-depth discussion on the two major topics of international communication & value shaping and cultural envoys & common prosperity, digging deep into the "soft connectivity" of international communication under the BRI framework and tell new stories of people-to-people friendship along the Belt and Road.

The event is co-hosted by the information office of the government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the government of Karamay and Global Times Online, and supported by the Special Fund for Positive Online Communication of the China Internet Development Foundation.