“This is an all-out assault on internet freedoms”, she said. Rights groups say it uses state security as a pretext to crack down on political dissent.
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China will implement cyber development and big data strategies, and the “Internet Plus” action plan in the next five years, Xi said. “No country should pursue cyber hegemony, interfere in other countries’ internal affairs or engage in, connive at or support cyber activities that undermine other countries’ national security”, Xi said at the government-organised conference in Wuzhen of east China’s Zhejiang Province.
There are certain common principles in cyberspace that all countries should follow to assure win-win outcomes, however, each country is unique and its Internet governance models will reflect this.
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.
“The United States and China agree that neither country’s government will conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, including trade secrets or other confidential business information, with the intent of providing competitive advantages to companies or commercial sectors”, the White House said.
“International cyberspace governance should promote a multilateral approach”, he said.
“This is the place with the best Internet connection in China”, Kaspersky Lab chief executive Eugene Kaspersky said. “We warmly welcome enterprises and entrepreneurs to invest in China, as long as they are in accordance with Chinese laws”, Xi emphasized in his speech.
The three-day conference in the small eastern town of Wuzhen was attended by a handful of high-profile figures from nations that have been criticised for their records on freedom of speech, including Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev. Many other countries were represented by locally based diplomats.
World Internet Conference 1.0 past year was greeted with derision by many who questioned China’s motives. Last year, the event was used as a platform for Beijing to map out a vision for governance and control of the Internet.
The rules, Lu said, were meant to protect national prerogatives, as well as the “legal rights and interests of global enterprises in China”.
The official Global Times newspaper on Wednesday dismissed “news and information freedom” as a “detail, a small corner” of the “vast field of internet freedom”. “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.
This is a large number, and the Internet is also rapidly developing in Russian Federation.
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According to The Hill, Reporters Without Borders and GreatFire – which tracks China’s online censorship and helps provide ways around it – both urged foreign representatives to boycott the conference.
