A top Chinese official called for governments around the world to work together more closely to monitor emerging technologies while taking an indirect jab at US attempt to discourage cooperation.
The basis for a free and collaborative web said Huang Kunming, a representative of the Politburo, "is very unstable." The Politburo, the principal policymaking body of the communist party, is comprised of the top 25 senior officials from China.
Huang was a keynote speaker during the 6th World Internet Conference held in Wuzhen, a small town in the Zhejiang province in eastern China.
The 3-day gab attracted over 1,500 people from over 70 territories, including leaders of the Internet Hall of Fame, Nobel Prize winners and Turing Award winners, with the theme: "Smart, Connectivity, Openness and Cooperation: Jointly Creating a Global Future Culture in Cyberspace."
"Many nations use cybersecurity as a reason to limit or exclude businesses from other countries. These campaigns spread doubt over cyberspace and even antagonism," Huang added, without mentioning the United States.
Technology has increasingly come to the forefront of a trade-initiated confrontation between the US and China that has since spread to 5G mobile and artificial intelligence networks.
Throughout its 5G proposals, Washington urged governments not to use Huawei's technology, claiming that it could enable Beijing's to use this for its hacking capabilities, as the US blacklisted some of China's leading artificial intelligence firms, alleging their ties to ethnic minority imprisonment.
According to the Politburo official, parties involved must learn to respect each government's approach to the growth and development of the internet, its rules and the countries' rights to join "international governance based on mutual trust." Kumming is also head of the Chinese Communist Party's media relations.
He added that government agencies must "pay attention to each others' interests and concerns, and effectively deal with misunderstandings to prevent misjudgment."
Some of the key figures who attended the conference were Alibaba Holding Group Ltd's chief executive Daniel Zhang, Baidu Inc. chief executive Robin Li, and Western Digital Corporation Chief Executive Steve Milligan.
Among other leaders this year were the local executives of US network computer companies Honeywell, Motorola, Intel, and Cisco Systems, as well as Microsoft's technology and cloud services company.
But there were no US media companies like Google, Twitter, Facebook, or Samsung. Google, Twitter, and Facebook were barred in China, although Apple is forced to use a local partner to provide cloud services.
Since 2014, the state-run World Internet Forum, also known as the Wuzhen Summit, has been organized in the canal town near Shanghai as a forum for the Chinese government to promote its vision of global internet regulation and sell to other countries it's own highly restricted web template.
