MOSCOW, November 19 (Sputnik) — The World Internet Conference, which opens today in the Chinese town of Wuzhen, is set to discuss China’s growing global internet presence and its implications for commerce and cybersecurity. Rights groups, meanwhile, fear that the event may serve as a prelude to a more systemic approach of control over the internet in the country.
Discussing China’s ever-increasing internet presence, which includes over 632 million users and is projected to grow to 850 million by next year, conference attendees will discuss issues including global internet governance, mobile internet, ecommerce, cybersecurity and terrorism.
The three-day conference, themed “An Interconnected World Shared and Governed by All”, will run until Friday, and is being attended by over a thousand representatives of internet firms, analytical institutes and regulators, including e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, media and internet firm Tencent Holdings and Chinese search engine company Baidu. Foreign companies including Microsoft, Apple, LinkedIn and Amazon are also in attendance.
The conference’s primary organizer is China’s State Internet Information Office, a regulatory agency which has seen its powers expanded since February of this year to become the country’s main internet governance office. Agency Chairman Lu Wei noted ahead of the conference that its key purpose would be to present “a panoramic view for the first time of the concept of the development of China’s internet and its achievements.”
Business and Security Interests at the Forefront
One of the two major themes being focused on by observers is business, with Mr. Lu pointing out that the country now has “four out of the top 10 internet companies [worldwide],” and noting that he hopes that “everyone can find a market here and seize business opportunities.” The focus on business is hardly surprising, given Chinese internet-shoppers’ ever-growing appetites, which are poised to set ever-higher sales records domestically and to account for an ever-growing slice of the ecommerce pie globally.
All eyes were also focused on the implications of statements made at the conference about the future of China’s concept of internet security, whether it’s direct censorship, issues surrounding foreign social media companies’ access to the Chinese market, or threats such as cyber-terrorism.
The conference’s official press statement, made available on its website, emphasizes that the internet’s use as a tool for “economic development and convenient living” has also brought with it “increasing threats to cyber security, [an] uneven distribution of critical internet resources and new risks arising from novel technologies.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s message of congratulations ahead of the conference also discusses the need for countries to work together in the area of cyber security and to account for others’ national interests. In the message, published by Xinhua, President Xi notes that the internet has “turned the world into a global village, increasing global interdependence, and added that this development has also created “new challenges to national sovereignty, security and development interests, which require that the international community meet urgently and seriously.” The Chinese president noted that China would be willing to “work with other countries to deepen international cooperation, respect sovereignty on the internet, uphold cyber security, and jointly build a cyberspace of peace, security, openness and cooperation.”
President Xi’s message was echoed by Chinese Vice Premier Ma Kai, the highest-ranking official from the Chinese government in attendance, who noted that “internet security is [a] common challenge faced by human society,” and that countries should “fully respect the different concerns that each nation has towards internet security,” Agence France-Presse quoted him as saying.
Economic and Political Interests Behind the “Great Firewall”
Critics of the conference have noted that its security theme and discussions of a unified ‘concept of development’ may be a prelude to tightened control over the country’s internet, given its steady growth and ever-increasing commercial and social potential in recent years. In a statement released ahead of the meeting, Amnesty International China researcher William Nee stated his view that China “appears eager to promote its own domestic internet rules as a model for global regulation,” which “should send a chill down the spine of anyone that values online freedom,” given that the country’s “internet model is one of extreme control and suppression.”
Mr. Nee’s comments are in line with observations made by others about China’s so-called “Great Firewall,” an effort by the Chinese government to block, monitor and restrict resources including pornography and other lewd material, as well as social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, which Chinese regulators argue can be used as platforms for political and social destabilization. Speaking for Xinhua, Mr. Lu noted that while “China has always been hospitable to the outside world,” the country should be able to “choose who will be a guest in [its] home.”
In spite of the restrictions, China is far from being alone in the world when it comes to internet regulation, either for commercial or political purposes, leading some observers to note that politics and economics are driving concerns just as much as the potential new restrictions are. Cyrus Mewawalla, managing director of London’s CM Research group, noted that with China now able to “look at the US as an equal” in terms of “size, power and [the] influence of its internet market…this creates tension with respect to who sets the world order in the digital universe.” Mr. Mewawalla added that “China clearly wants more power when it comes to determining world standards governing the internet, but China sees the internet very differently from the US,” Bloomberg quoted him as saying.
