John Hoffman, CEO of GSMA, addresses the opening ceremony of the Fifth World Internet Conference, which kicked off in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, on Wednesday. [Photo by Chen Zebing/China Daily]

Nation to lead renewed efforts in security of cyberspace

China will push forward global efforts in internet infrastructure, digital economy and cyberspace security, so as to benefit people across the world with the latest internet achievements, a top official said on Wednesday.

"The nation will increase investments and technology support for constructing internet infrastructure, including submarine and trans-border land optical cables," said Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee.

"We aim to build a new cyberspace that is interconnected with the world and that its internet development can bring more benefits to people across the globe," said Huang at the Fifth World Internet Conference, which kicked off in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, on Wednesday.

Efforts will also be made in promoting digital economy as artificial intelligence, big data, quantum information and other forefront technologies are gaining momentum and are speeding up to integrate with industries, he said.

In China, the digital economy is moving forward at an unprecedented speed and is playing an increasingly important role in driving the country's economic growth.

Turing Laureate Whitfield Diffie meets with reporters after the opening ceremony of the Fifth World Internet Conference, which kicked off in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, on Wednesday. [Photo by Xu Jingxing/China Daily]

Driven by the coming-of-age mobile payment technologies, healthcare, education and entertainment sectors have all benefited greatly from the booming digital wave.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the size of China's digital economy hit 27.2 trillion yuan ($3.93 trillion) last year, accounting for 32.9 percent of the country's gross domestic product, up 2.6 percentage points year-on-year.

"(During the process), we are expected to support different kinds of innovation based on the internet and enlarge support to innovative small and medium-sized enterprises or SMEs in the early stage, to inject fresh impetus to the digital economy," said Huang.

Huang's remarks are in tandem with the country's ongoing moves, epitomized by the country's telecom companies which are already working on a number of cross-border network infrastructure projects.

A case in point is the Asia-Africa-Europe-1 cable system, a 25,000-kilometer submarine cable system linking Asia, Africa and Europe, that entered service last year. China United Network Communications Group, or China Unicom, the country' second largest telecom carrier, is a key participant of it.

As the world's largest submarine cable system built in more than a decade, it will provide the lowest latency express internet route among dozens of countries and regions across Asia and Europe, according to China Unicom.

At the conference, Huang also called for global trust and cooperation in protecting data safety to further promote the construction of cybersecurity systems and safeguard global network security.

Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Lab, a world-leading Russian computer security firm, appreciated the country's foresight in safeguarding cyberspace security.

"China, as one of the world's largest IT markets, boasts huge amounts of data. China's information and technology market is also growing at a rocketing speed," said Kaspersky.

"The Chinese government has been paying high attention on cyberspace security and protection of key information infrastructure. This is extremely important when internet becomes a vital infrastructure," he said.

Hans Uszkoreit (center) from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, talks with other guests before the opening of the Fifth World Internet Conference, which kicked off in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, on Wednesday. [Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]