A woman receives a glass of milk from a robot at a stand during the Sixth World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang Province on Sunday. Photo: AFP

China's internet sector has gone through drastic changes in the past 25 years to become a key cyber power in the world and the country is expected to continue building up an open, interconnected and safe cyberspace together with the international community, high-level officials and executives said during the sixth World Internet Conference on Sunday.

The conference kicked off in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang Province on Sunday. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter to the event, which will run till Tuesday. 

This year's conference is themed "intelligent interconnection for openness and cooperation: building a community with a shared future in cyberspace."

A new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is accelerating, and new technologies, new applications and new forms of business such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data and the Internet of Things (IoT) are just unfolding, Xi said in the letter, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

The internet is embracing a stronger development momentum and broader development space, he said.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of the internet as well as the 25th anniversary since China achieved a fully functional connection to the internet in 1994. 

Xi said that it is the common responsibility of the international community to develop, use and govern the internet well so that it can better benefit mankind.

Countries should follow the trend of the times, shoulder the responsibility for development, meet the challenges and risks, jointly promote global governance in cyberspace and strive to build a community of shared future in cyberspace, he said.

Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, read the letter at the opening ceremony of the conference.

In his keynote speech during the opening ceremony, Huang said that starting from  a fresh start, China should well seize opportunities and positively cope with risks and challenges. "Facing toward the future, China will continue to play the role as a big country to shoulder responsibilities, make efforts as the contributor of cyberspace development, promoter of cyberspace openness, defender of cyberspace safety as well as constructor of international cyberspace governance," said Huang.

"Today, cybersecurity has become more and more important. As President Xi said, it requires more international cooperation by dialogue. This is particularly important for one reason: Technology has clearly become more complex and requires more discussion but at the end it's possible to find solution," Luigi Gambardella, founder and president of ChinaEU Association for Digital, told the Global Times on Sunday.

In recent years, China has participated in international cyberspace governance, made efforts to promote international cooperation and pushed for more equity. While on the other hand, China is confronted with a more complex situation. Some countries are using IT and its relevant products as a means to suppress and contain other countries, exacerbating the threat of confrontation in cyberspace, according to the China Internet Development Report 2019 released by Chinese Academy of Cyberspace Studies on Sunday in Wuzhen.

Philippe Lin, president and chief representative of Eutelsat China Region, told the Global Times on the sidelines of the conference that he appreciates the concept of jointly building up the internet sector as the conference has expressed. "There are vast maritime and space areas in China that are not connected to the internet where satellite can help fulfill the digital gap and I see a broad space for China-EU cooperation on that front to further improve the country's internet infrastructure," Lin said.

Digital future

The tremendous progress of China's internet sector in the past more than two decades has greatly boosted the nation's digital economy and will embrace a prosperous future spurred by high technologies such as 5G, AI and IoT while more attention will be paid to data privacy and cyber security.

By June, the country had 854 million internet users, more than the entire population of Europe, up 25.98 million compared with the level at the end of last year, according to the China Internet Network Information Center. 

According to the China Internet Development Report 2019, the scale of China's digital economy reached 31.3 trillion yuan ($4.42 trillion) in 2018, accounting for 34.8 percent of the nation's total GDP.

Amid the uncertainties of global economic growth, digitalization has grown into a major economic driver. 


Newspaper headline: Shared future in cyberspace