Wuzhen (China) (AFP)
China on Sunday announced its ambition to become a "great power" of cyberspace and criticized the US preponderance in this area, at the opening of its annual high mass of the internet.
The Sino-US rivalry is increasingly playing on the technological field, as Beijing progresses in the high-tech industries, while Washington tries to curb Chinese companies like telecom giant Huawei.
Fifty years after the beginning of the Internet and 25 years after its introduction in China, "we have become a power of cyberspace 800 million Internet users," said the head of the propaganda department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) , Huang Kunming.
Speaking at the opening of the 6th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen (eastern China), Huang added that his country would continue "to relentlessly expand Internet development and move from power of cyberspace to that of great power of cyberspace ".
The development of the internet in China has been sheltered from a "Great Wall of Computers" which blocks the access of American giants of the sector like Google, YouTube, Twitter, Wikipedia or Facebook, considered threatening by the party in power.
These sites are not accessible in Wuzhen without using a virtual VPN network, even though the annual conference hosts some 15,000 participants from 80 countries, according to the organizers.
Without naming the United States, Huang denounced the "aggressive" behavior of some countries, "who use the cybersecurity argument as an excuse to attack other states."
Washington blacklisted China's Huawei, the world's leading telecom equipment company for 5G - the fifth generation of mobile internet. The United States says it suspects the equipment could be used for espionage by Beijing, an argument rejected by Huawei.
The United States also announced this month a blacklist of 28 Chinese public or private entities accused of being involved in the enhanced surveillance of the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang (northwestern China). .
© 2019 AFP