The Fifth Euro-China Conference on Intelligent Data Analysis and Applications, hosted by Xi'an University of Posts and Telecommunications (XUPT), was successfully opened on October 12, 2018, in the Jiyuan International Hotel, Xi'an, China. The opening ceremony was moderated by Professor Jiaming Gong (Vice President of XUPT), with Professor Jiulun Fan (President of XUPT) as the host to express the most sincere welcome to all the participants. Then Professor Jianfu Cao (the general secretary of the institute of automation of Shaanxi Province, and Professor in Xi'an Jiaotong University), and the representatives from the co-sponsors gave their speeches one by one. Especially, Professor Kaiming Ting (Federation University Australia) gave a speech titled 'Data Dependent Similarity: Why they are better than Euclidean distance'. Dr. Abolfazl Razi from Northern Arizona University gave a speech titled 'Predictive communications for UAV networks: the intersection of machine learning and wireless communications'. During the speeches, the participants discussed the related academic issues deeply.