‘Cold war thinking’ hindering mutual trust in cyberspace, China’s propaganda chief says

A “cold war” mentality and “bullying behaviour” are hindering mutual trust in cyberspace, China’s propaganda chief said on Sunday at the start of the World Internet Conference.

Huang Kunming, head of the ruling Communist Party’s publicity department, said also that under the pretext of national security, some countries had launched cyberattacks on countries and enterprises.

He did not specify which countries he was referring to.

“The cold war thinking and zero-sum game, this has stopped and hindered exchanges in cyberspace. Also, bullying behaviour in cyberspace has had a negative impact on mutual trust,” he said at the event in Wuzhen, east China’s Zhejiang province.

“By using national security as an excuse, some countries have attacked some countries and enterprises. This has increased the uncertainty, opposition and negativity in cyberspace.”

The state-run World Internet Conference, one of the country’s most prominent tech conferences, takes place this year against a backdrop of rising US-China tensions that have cast a shadow over the technology sector.

Washington has barred US firms from exporting to Huawei and other Chinese companies through a trade blacklist and the two countries have slapped tit-for-tat tariffs on each other in a intensifying trade war, which has also hit supply chains.

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China has traditionally used the three-day event, whose attendees this year include Alibaba Group, which owns the South China Morning Post, Baidu, Microsoft and Qualcomm, to promote its own ideology for global internet governance and defend its highly policed cyberspace.

Beijing has been pushing for a bigger role in global internet governance and has called on nations to respect its “cyber sovereignty”, the idea that countries should be free to control and censor their internet infrastructure as they see fit.

The annual conference is organised by the nation’s internet censorship bureau, the Cyberspace Administration of China, which is responsible for managing the nation’s tight controls that prevent users from accessing services like Facebook and Google.