CANBERRA -- About 120 guests on Saturday attended and contributed positively to discussion over China's modern social and cultural issues in the 2011 Melbourne Conference on China which is being held at University of Melbourne, Australia.

The two-day conference, themed "The City, the Countryside and the World China's rural and urban transformations and their global connections", has invited more than 20 leading scholars and policy advisers from China, Singapore, Australia, U.S. and France to address their study findings on particular field related to China.

Organizer of the conference, Dr Gao Jia, estimated that there were 120 guests attended on Saturday alone, compared to about 90 participants last year.

More than half of the guests are Chinese, some of which came from Renmin University of China and University of Nottingham in Ningbo, while the others are Chinese who are doing research work in universities in Australia and U.S.

By bringing a group of passionate experts from different parts of the world, the participants were engaged in discussions in each session. During the lunch time, most of the guests continued to share ideas with each other, exchanged business cards and hoped to have future opportunities to work with their "new friends".

The conference opened on Saturday, with the first day has covered issues on rural and urban social changes, infrastructure and sustainability, water management, contemporary culture, as well as other conditions in China.

Jia said he is happy to see that the conference allows researchers and professors to have constructive conversations, adding that a wide-range of issues are on the agenda in the unique part of this conference.

"Human right in China is an out-dated topic, instead there are many other important issues China is facing," Jia told Xinhua in an interview on Saturday.

"Due to the rapid growth, study area on China is no longer enough by just focusing on tea culture and traditional dancing. Now we have to do serious research study about the society development, economy and many other areas.

"So I want to make use of this conference to allow experts all over the world to sit down, share their study findings over the issues that are contemporary, up-to-dated."

Jia added that he hopes University of Melbourne will expand its cooperation with universities in China, in a move to make joining efforts to do more in-depth, valuable research on China.

One of the speakers, Wilfred Wang from Monash University, said the conference allowed him to learn a "broader picture" of China.

"It was great talks, very interesting and some new topics that I have never noticed before", Wang told Xinhua.

The second day of conference will focus on economy and foreign affairs issues in China.