More Cooperation In Cyberspace

The 2020 World Internet Conference (WIC) was held on November 23-24 in the water town Wuzhen in Zhejiang Province, east China. The theme of this year’s conference was “Digital Empowerment Creates a Better Tomorrow: Building a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace,” which embodied China’s hope for enhanced cooperation in cyberspace around the world.

Many Western countries are in the habit of lambasting other countries about cybersecurity issues, turning a blind eye to the fact that the Internet, a tool that supports human development, is a product that will inevitably emerge when human science and technology evolves to a certain stage. Condemnation by these countries is undoubtedly politically motivated. Our hope is that the Internet will revert to its original nature, that is, as a tool for promoting social and economic development for all people.

At the Second WIC in 2015, Chinese President Xi Jinping unveiled his vision for building a community with a shared future in cyberspace. Over the following years, the WIC has continued to function as a platform for the world to carry out cooperation in cyberspace. China is working together with the global community to promote global digital empowerment and economic recovery, while upholding the concepts of openness, equality, mutual trust, and win-win cooperation.

Global cooperation should extend to all facets of cyberspace, including cybersecurity, technology, application, and intellectual property rights. At this time, as the world is being ravaged by the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the merits of using the Internet for virus prevention and control, business recovery, and trade have moved further into the spotlight, making tolerance, balance, and win-win cooperation in cyberspace extremely important.

In addition to its successful use in virus prevention and control measures, the Internet has also played a crucial role in the swift rebound of the Chinese economy, which was heavily hammered in the early months of the outbreak. Online business negotiations, cloud contract signing, recruitment and many other key business functions have all been made possible by the Internet. It is no exaggeration to say that it is the Internet that has sustained supply chains and market chains during the pandemic. Many countries have turned to robots and industrial Internet applications to meet staff shortages. Additionally, a large proportion of schooling, medical treatment and urban management is also conducted online now.

These same Internet technologies that are used in China are also widely applied in other major economies around the world. Today, the Internet is an inseparable part of people’s daily lives. If countries are able to increase their cooperation in cyberspace, not only will the Internet add impetus to their cooperation in economic activities and the daily lives of their peoples, it will also help strengthen their shared ability to manage future crises.

Western politicians like to dwell on issues of cybersecurity and cybersovereignty; however, these two issues should not necessarily create stumbling blocks to cyberspace cooperation. National governments are entitled to administer cyberspace in accordance with their own laws. They should have the right to exercise jurisdiction over information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure, resources and activities within their territories, and are entitled to protect their ICT systems and resources from threats. Guided by these principles, the international community should work to promote openness and cooperation in cyberspace, and strive to achieve complementarity of strengths and common development for all countries in cyberspace.

At the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, held in late October in Beijing, cyber development was put forward as a strategic target for China, with a view to applying more Internet technologies to social and economic development for the good of the Chinese people. This target should not be applied to China alone, but to all people around the world.

The biggest stumbling blocks in international cyberspace cooperation are unbalanced development, inadequate legislation and the inequitable order in cyberspace. The digital divide among countries and regions is widening. The existing global governance system of basic Internet resources now hardly reflects the desires and interests of the majority of countries.

To address these challenges, the key remains international cooperation. The international community should work together through intensified cooperation in the spirit of mutual respect, mutual understanding and accommodation, so as to put in place a rule-based global governance system in cyberspace. Countries should promote development cooperation at the bilateral, regional and international levels. In particular, more technical and financial assistance should be channeled to developing countries for capacity building, to assist them in seizing digital opportunities and bridging the digital divide.

If countries are able to increase their cooperation in cyberspace, not only will the Internet add impetus to their cooperation in economic activities and the daily lives of their peoples, it will also help strengthen their shared ability to manage future crises