Second World Internet Conference Concludes

Xi made the remarks in a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the 2nd World Internet conference held in Wuzhen, east town of China’s Zhejiang province.

“We should respect Internet users’ rights to exchange their ideas and express their minds, and we should also build a good order in cyberspace in accordance with law as it will help protect the legitimate rights and interests of all Internet users”, Xi said. In May, he designated China’s Internet elites as a key focus for the ruling party’s outreach, elevating them to a level of strategic importance on par with ethnic minority leaders and Taiwan’s political parties.

Xi also said China fully supported the setting up of an worldwide treaty on cyber-counterterrorism and was opposed to the cyber arms race, which has seen nations use the internet to carry out espionage and disrupt other states’ communications. “The future of cyberspace should be in the hands of all countries”, he said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called on all countries to cooperate in joint efforts to fight cyber crimes and “internet terrorism”, warning against double standards in safeguarding Internet security.

China has also more frequently attacked the use of virtual proxy network (VPN) software, which is widely used by expatriates, foreign businesses, and many tech-savvy Chinese to circumvent the Great Firewall.

“I hope China’s Internet can truly link up and communicate with the rest of the world”, wrote one wry observer on Sina Weibo, the country’s most popular microblog.

“Under the guise of sovereignty and security, the Chinese authorities are trying to rewrite the rules of the internet so censorship and surveillance become the norm everywhere”.

Popular social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, for example, are blocked in the country, with a pilot free-trade zone active in Shanghai in the past which allows access to such content, although still heavily restricted.

Xi called for a balance between order and freedom, echoing previous administration claims that the former leads to broader Internet freedoms. Countries who attended were Russia, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and finally Tonga. Foreign diplomats say such a declaration was put under their hotel room doors on the last night of the conference past year, but they refused to sign it.

A high-level advisory committee for the World Internet Conference’s (WIC) organizing committee secretariat was established on Wednesday, the organizing committee said Thursday.

The sovereign nature of cyberspace entails that it is not a domain beyond the rule of law and rules are necessary in cyberspace, as is freedom.

At last year’s Wuzhen conference, organizers tried unsuccessfully to persuade global Internet companies to endorse a call for the world community to “respect Internet sovereignty” and “spread positive energy”.

The time has come to drag the issue into the cold, hard light of day, and China, with an online population of 670 million – more than twice the entire population of the United States – and more than four million registered domains, has as much right as anyone to raise the debate.