The Chinese government effectively argues that its efforts to manage the internet – whether involving the scrubbing of politically critical content from websites or the criminal prosecution of dissident bloggers – are as legitimate as regulations in other countries to ban online child pornography. Xi called Wednesday for governments to cooperate in regulating Internet use, stepping up efforts to promote controls that activists complain stifle free expression.
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Lu Wei, head of the Cyberspace Administration of China, defended China’s policies at a briefing on the conference earlier this month.
Indeed, despite heavy censorship, political commentary about the trial of a prominent Chinese human rights lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang, and other news still made it onto Chinese social media this week.
“We consider it (ICTs) as a key enabler to achieve efficiency, transparency, good governance and empowering the people”, he added.
Rights campaigners have denounced the World Internet Conference as part of China’s push to sell its idea of “Internet sovereignty”, a concept at odds with a vision of the network as an open global resource. With around 670 million users and over 4.13 million websites in China, the Internet and economic and social development have become intrinsically linked.
“In today’s world, the development of the Internet poses challenges for countries’ sovereignty, security and development”, Xi said in a speech to the National Congress of Brazil previous year.
Conference-goers have also been issued with a 10-point list of China’s internet success today, although people on Twitter have disputed some of its claims.
The U.S. and Chinese authorities regularly accuse each other of online snooping, hacking and corporate espionage.
Prime ministers Dmitry Medvedev of Russian Federation and Karim Massimov of Kazakhstan, whose nations are members of the regional Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, also were there.
“Cyberspace should not become a battlefield for countries to wrestle with one another, nor should it become a hotbed for crime”.
China’s growing global influence was highlighted by the fact that many major technology companies – including Microsoft, LinkedIn and Facebook (which is blocked in China but has been seeking to improve its relations with the government) – sent representatives to the conference.
As a sign of how seriously Beijing takes the still-young WIC, Chinese President Xi Jinping himself attended and made opening remarks.
The country has about 650 million internet users but has been classified as the most censored country in the world by the Washington-based NGO Freedom House.
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China’s largely rubber stamp parliament in July also passed a sweeping national security law that tightened government control in politics, culture, the military, the economy, technology and the environment. “We can not just have the security of one or some countries while leaving the rest insecure; still less should one seek the so-called absolute security for oneself at the expense of the security of others”, he said.
