Full coverage: Summer Davos Forum 2016

Premier Li Keqiang will address the opening ceremony of the forum. This year's theme "the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Its Transformational Impact". Participants will discuss a range of issues in the advances in cyber-physical systems.

The First Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes. This included going from manual production methods to machines, characterized by the increasing use of steam power.

The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, brought major breakthroughs in the form of electricity distribution, both wireless and wired communication.

The Third Industrial Revolution began in the 1950s with the development of digital systems, communication and rapid advances in computing power.

Now the Fourth Industrial Revolution is underway. It can be described as the advent of "cyber-physical systems". These involve entirely new capabilities for people and machines. Examples include genome editing, new forms of machine intelligence, breakthrough materials, and approaches to governance that rely on cryptographic methods such as the blockchain.