Professor Jiang Wu visited the headquarters of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) at its invitation from May 29th to 30th.

During the visit, Henry Van Burgsteden, Head of the Digital Agriculture Department at FAO's Innovation Office and Chief Technology Officer of the Global Digital Agriculture Innovation Center, joined more than 20 global experts in digital villages to hold in-depth discussions with Jiang Wu's team on the Urban-Rural Interconnection digital rural revitalization model in a hybrid virtual and onsite meeting.

The meeting focused on three core themes: Development Prospects, Cooperation Pathways, and Development Opportunities. Jiang Wu comprehensively introduced China's experience in rural digital development from four aspects: project background, empowerment cases, innovative models, and future visions. He highlighted how the Urban-Rural Interconnection model empowers rural revitalization through digital technologies, achieves complementary urban-rural resources, element circulation, and collaborative development. Participating experts highly praised the innovation and replicability of the Urban-Rural Interconnection model, noting its broad promotion prospects globally. The two sides also explored future cooperation pathways between Wuhan University and FAO in the field of digital villages, stating they will leverage FAO's strategic framework for the Digital Villages Initiative to jointly explore new opportunities for global rural digital development.

Jiang Wu has dedicated himself to information management and data intelligence. The National Key R&D Program project he led, Integration and Application Demonstration of Cloud Service Technologies for Rural Cultural Tourism, passed the comprehensive performance evaluation by the end of 2023. The project's key achievement, the Urban-Rural Interconnection model, has been implemented in Jiangxi, Hubei, and other regions, creating application demonstrations and constructing a theoretical framework for China's digital village development, attracting attention from national media including those in Morocco. This in-depth exchange with FAO marks that China's solutions, represented by the Urban-Rural Interconnection model, are integrating into the global rural digital development system, poised to contribute more Chinese wisdom and practical experience to promoting a fairer and more sustainable new order for global rural and agricultural development.