China moves to further curb internet use

The government has increased restrictions since Xi took power three years ago, passing a security law establishing “cybersovereignty”, making the resending of rumours over the Internet a crime and advancing regulations that would let companies in key sectors only use technology deemed “safe and controllable”.

He also said no country should dominate cyberspace, a nod to China’s argument that the United States has too much sway over how the internet is run.

China’s president Xi Jinping says there is a need for greater security in cyberspace, while also promising to expand the Internet within the world’s most populous nation.

The BBC’s John Sudworth is at the conference, and explains why.

Xi’s government has presided over tightening controls of the internet in recent years, introducing rules allowing people to be jailed for spreading rumors, drafting a tough new internet law and detaining a number of people for online posts. “While respecting internet users’ rights to exchange ideas and express their views, efforts should be made to build a sound cyberspace order under the law so as to protect the legitimate rights and interests of all internet users”. Last year, a draft statement urging the worldwide community to “respect the internet sovereignty of all countries” was slipped at midnight under the doors of attendees’ hotel rooms.

William Nee, a China researcher at Amnesty International, said the group feared that companies would compromise free-speech principles to gain access to China’s market. One of China’s leading civil rights lawyers, Pu Zhiqiang, was put on trial Monday for seven tweets he wrote criticizing government policy and lack of democracy.

Xi said China fully backed the drawing up of an worldwide treaty on cyber-counterterrorism and was opposed to the cyber-arms race, which has seen countries use the internet to carry out espionage and disrupt other states’ communications.

The end goal of this tactic is, according to Franz-Stefan Gady of the East West Institute, to “gain de jure global support for China’s de facto Internet censorship policies”.

Xi’s comments reflect the growing assertiveness of China’s ruling Communist Party in promoting its own vision for how to regulate global finance, technology, news media and other matters.

China already counts 670 million web users and 4.13 million web sites, and Xi promised to expand Internet coverage to every administrative village in the country by 2020.

On Wednesday, Mr Xi also reiterated a call for countries to work together on internet security. “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.