Visitors watch a demonstration of robot surgery system during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2018 in Shanghai, east China, Sept. 17, 2018.

China is now home to 1,040 artificial intelligence (AI) enterprises, ranking second in the world, only beaten by the U.S. with 2,039 such companies according to the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, held in Shanghai on Sept. 17.

China has, however, surpassed the U.S. to become the country with the largest number of AI patent applications, while Japan took third place, the conference disclosed.

The event attracted a number of American AI industry leaders such as Microsoft and Google, as well as Chinese tech firms including Alibaba, Tencent and SenseTime, who exhibited facial recognition and autopilot technology, alongside visual data display and e-commerce analyzing software at the conference.

Thanks to the rapid development of China’s technology industry and mass data processing, the world is giving more and more importance to the Chinese market.

According to a report issued by the World Economic Forum on Monday, the global application and promotion of AI and robots will create tens of millions of jobs in the next few years.

The report predicted that 75 million jobs will be replaced by AI technology in the future, but another 133 million will be created. 29 percent of jobs today are done by robots, and that figure is expected to rise to 42 percent by 2022, the report said.