China is accelerating integration of the internet of things and artificial intelligence with the real economy, said an official at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

"More efforts should be made to build up new industrialization demonstration bases for the development of the IoT and integrate AI with various fields, including manufacturing, healthcare and transportation," Wang Weiming, deputy director of the science and technology department of the ministry, said on Friday at a news conference held in Wuxi, Jiangsu province.

As part of China's effort to boost the IoT sector, the 2018 World Internet of Things Expo will be held from Saturday to Tuesday in Wuxi.

With a theme of "Digitalized New Economy, IoT-driven New Times", the 50,000-square-meter expo has attracted more than 500 leading domestic companies and organizations such as Tencent Holdings Ltd, JD.com, and Baidu Inc, as well as foreign giants Microsoft and Amazon. More than 180,000 people are expected to visit the expo.

Several forums will be held during the event, covering topics such as IoT and smart manufacturing, industrial internet, big data innovative development, smart transportation and internet of vehicles, IoT and AI and data security.

Notably, the expo will showcase the world's first city-level internet of vehicles LTE-V2X project, and visitors will be able to take a ride. During the event, leading tech companies will stimulate a wide range of smart applications related to unmanned supermarkets, virtual reality, robots and block chains.