President to attend World Internet Conference in China

In his keynote speech on Wednesday, Xi reiterated this idea, saying that countries should work together to “build an Internet governance system to promote equity and justice”. Xi described the web as rife with threats to global society, including “the shadow of terrorism”, and crimes, including identity theft, drug dealing, money laundering and gambling.

Others, including press freedom advocacy group Reporters Without Borders and China censorship watchdog GreatFire.org, called for a boycott of China’s World Internet Conference.

Sovereign equality, one of the basic norms in contemporary worldwide relations enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, should also be applicable to cyberspace.

Security experts say China is the biggest source of hacking attacks aimed at governments and companies.

The conference 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. Foreign diplomats say such a declaration was put under their hotel room doors on the last night of the conference previous year, but they refused to sign it.

World Internet Conference is a joint venture of the Cyberspace Administration of China and the People’s Government of Zhejiang Province, Peoples Republic of China.

Compared with the first conference held previous year, the number of guests has increased with more than 2,000 participants from home and overseas, Lu said, adding about 50 percent will be from foreign countries. And he said China was willing to help other countries learn from its development of the internet.

After the out of the U.S 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. At the same, time president Xi has set up a new group within the country’s leadership to oversee the internet, which he himself chairs.