The 2016 Computing Conference came to a close in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province on Oct 16, heralding a raft of deals signed between tech firms, government and science institutes.

Most influential of the deals was between the Zhejiang government and e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. The two sides will cooperate to build an advanced IT-based education system by 2020, providing students with a complete online learning platform, and making use of big data and informatization in the following five years.

Since autumn this year, students and teachers in Zhejiang secondary schools have already gained access to an online platform for learning, teaching and discussion.

National Astronomical Observatories announced the strategic partnership with Aliyun, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba, to research astronomy by using cloud technologies and big data.

An astronomical big data research center will be established for the good of hyper scale computing, data sharing and operations at FAST, the largest single dish radio telescope in the world that opened in Guizhou, China in September.

Tsinghua University and Ant Financial Services Group, an Internet finance affiliate backed by Alibaba Group, will found a joint laboratory on financial technology to research financial security, artificial intelligence, intelligent investment consultation and to turn theoretical results into practice.

The two sides will also cooperate in international talents hunting and in boosting close interaction among academics, governments and the business world in a bid to conduct advanced scientific research and make more financial services available for the public.

The laboratory will be led by Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, dean of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences of Tsinghua University, as well as the only Chinese winner of the Turing Award, and honored with the "Nobel Prize of Computing".