A theoretical symposium marking the 10th anniversary of the concept of building a community with a shared future in cyberspace was held on Nov 6 in Wuzhen, East China’s Zhejiang province. 

Zhuang Rongwen, director of the Cyberspace Administration of China and chair of the World Internet Conference (WIC), and Wang Hao, secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Zhejiang Provincial Committee and chairman of the Standing Committee of the Zhejiang Provincial People’s Congress, attended the event and delivered keynote speeches.

The event was also attended by Wang Jingtao, deputy director of the Cyberspace Administration of China, and was chaired by Ren Xianliang, secretary-general of the WIC.

The symposium’s speakers included Francis Gurry, former director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization and vice-chair of the WIC; Chris Baryomunsi, minister of Information and Communications Technology of Uganda; Zhao Houlin, honorary president of the China Institute of Communications and former secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union; and Li Jun, president of Dawning Information Industry Co LTD.  Wu Dong, chief engineer of the Cyberspace Administration of China, attended the symposium.

Participants agreed that over the past decade, the vision of building a community with a shared future in cyberspace has gained growing international recognition and has evolved into a shared global practice for addressing common development challenges. In the context of accelerating digitalization, they called for closer, more inclusive and collaborative efforts to ensure that emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence are developed and applied for the greater good, to help bridge the digital divide and collectively advance the vision to a new stage.

Hosted by the WIC, the symposium centered on practice and prospects of building a community with a shared future in cyberspace. More than 100 senior representatives from international organizations, government departments, leading internet enterprises, research institutions, and academia participated in the symposium.