The exhibition themed “The Light of Internet” opened on Nov. 18, the day before the World Internet Conference (Wuzhen Summit).

Twenty years after the Internet first became accessible to the Chinese public, the first World Internet Conference (Wuzhen Summit) was hosted in Wuzhen city, Zhejiang Province, China.

Co-sponsored by the State Internet Information Office of China and Zhejiang Provincial Government, the summit drew more than 1,000 leading figures in the Internet sector from government agencies, international organizations, enterprises, and folk communities. Moreover, Wuzhen will be the permanent city where the conference will be held annually.

Guo Tianyong, a professor from the School of Finance at Central University of Finance and Economics, China remarked that as an important driver of growth, e-commerce is contributing to the domestic economy. The emergence of e-commerce will lead to a new portfolio of the retail sector, which differs from the traditional one.

“As is predicted, the volume of Chinese e-commerce economy will total approximately 50 trillion yuan by the year 2020, which is 10 times the volume of 2010,” said Liang Xiaochun, a standing member of the Executive Committee of the China Information Economics Society.

Some other scholars proposed that the Chinese government should take digital economy into full consideration and enforce policies that effectively support it.

In a session on new Internet media, Shen Yang from the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University said that traditional media, Internet media and social media, the three major types of media are reshaping the media ecology, which is dramatically changing in today’s Internet era.

 “The ecology of new media, like water and air, has become an indispensible part of human beings’ living environment. At the same time, it is also an essential part of Internet culture,” said the CEO of Xinhua Net Tian Shubin.

But he also noted that over-commercialization has led to disorder in terms of media competition, and as a result, there is an imbalance in the Internet environment. To reverse the situation, we need to attach high importance to the problem,” added Tian.

The exposure of the surveillance program PRISM in 2013 raised concerns from countries around the world about information security. China was one of the targets of the cyber attack. Most of the threats are the result of flaws in the network information system, especially the online application system, which poses great risks to a country’s information security.

President of the People’s Public Security University of China Cheng Lin called for closer cooperation among the anti-terrorist sectors of different countries in legislation, technology research, academic communication and talent cultivation to effectively curb online terrorist activities.

Due to historical and cultural divergences as well as the uneven pace of Internet development in different nations, each country adopts different approaches and modes of governance, but they have the common desire to foster the governance of cyberspace, said Lu Wei, deputy head of the Publicity Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and director of the Office of the Central Internet Security and Information Leading Group.

“Because a globally recognized governance system for cyberspace has not been established yet, we’ll find it hard to figure out a unanimous benchmark that enables us to exchange ideas when faced with cyberspace issues,” said Li Yuxiao, dean of the International School at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

We should focus on constructing a platform for a shared Internet that connects the world before we try to resolve disputes on network issues, Li said. 

The Chinese version appeared in Chinese Social Sciences Today, No. 672, Nov.26, 2014      

The Chinese link:

http://sscp.cssn.cn/xkpd/xszx/gn/201411/t20141126_1415854.html

Translated by Bai Le
Revised by Jusin Ward