Highlights of President Xi’s speech on cyber security

Chinese PresidentXi Jinpingdelivers a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Second World Internet Conference in Wuzhen Town, east China’s Zhejiang Province, Dec. 16, 2015.

“Even more, we should not allow cyberspace to become the new source of crimes”, Xi told the 2nd World Internet Conference underway in China’s Wuzhen.

Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed during a summit in Zhejiang province on Wednesday that countries should respect one another’s “cyber sovereignty” and avoid prescribing online policies beyond their own borders.

“We want to ring the alarm bells about China’s push to gain greater leverage over the governance of the Internet, to let people know if they comply with China’s laws they will be complicit in human-rights violations”, Nee said.

In September, US President Barack Obama said he and Xi had agreed that neither government would knowingly support cyber theft of corporate secrets to support domestic businesses.

It was his first appearance at the conference launched previous year by China to promote its Internet concepts to counter criticisms of its censorship policies as well as allegations of state-backed Chinese hackers targeting foreign firms.

Internet issues have gained prominence under Mr Xi’s rule since late 2012, with him setting up and chairing a new task force past year within the Communist Party on cyber security and informatisation issues.

“Attacks against critical infrastructure and information systems, an abuse of cyberspace by terrorists and criminals are a growing global menace and that dark side of internet needs to be dealt collectively through collaborative efforts of global community”, he said.

The idea is one China has studied from “developed countries in the West” Lu said, adding that “there isn’t a country in the whole world where internet content isn’t managed”.

Zhao encouraged China and the United States to try to reach a “compromise agreement” so that both can shift their focus to widening the global Internet market.

Xi called for a balance between order and freedom, echoing previous administration claims that the former leads to broader Internet freedoms.

“Freedom is our goal and order is our means”, he said.

On the sidelines of the conference, Robin Li, chief executive of Baidu, China’s largest search engine, admitted the decision on whether to display results for censored websites such as Facebook and Twitter on his company’s search engine was simply beyond its remit.

The Chinese president criticized hacking for commercial espionage and against government networks – activities the USA has accused China of sponsoring in the past – though he also said there should be no double standards in such areas.

“After the [exposure] of the US National Security Agency’s PRISM program, more countries have woken up to the fact that “absolute Internet freedom” touted by the US will only end up as “absolute security” in Washington and “absolute insecurity” for the rest”, it said.