This last demand went against the norms and spirit of the internet, but China was in a position to press for it. It wanted to absorb more internet-related innovations, build China into a cyber superpower, harness big data and artificial intelligence, and propagate Xi’s concept of cyber sovereignty-a euphemism for an international legal framework that would allow governments to curb internet freedoms as they saw fit. Wang began his address by suitably paying obeisance to Xi (“the chairman has important thoughts” “he wishes for accelerated development of the digital economy” “he has an accurate grasp of cyberspace development” and so on), and then went on to explain the CPC’s technology objectives.
At Wuzhen, he was making his first public speech to a global audience in decades. The official, Wang Huning, had for long been part of the Communist Party of China’s top rung of leaders, but few people outside the country knew him. Xi was surprisingly absent this year, but he had dispatched the senior official to deliver the inaugural address on his behalf. The World Internet Conference, which Wuzhen hosts every year, is China’s foremost technology convention where internet governance and policies are discussed. The guests included CEOs Tim Cook of Apple and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, senior executives of chipmaker Qualcomm and several other American technology giants, and the legendary Robert Kahn, electrical engineer and a founding father of the internet. The party has officially adopted Xi’s “China Dream”-which he describes as “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”.
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