China’s hosted its first World Internet Conference to join the conversation on global internet governance. Representatives from nearly 100 countries and regions included popular CEOs such as Jack Ma (Alibaba), Masayoshi Son (SoftBank), Pony Ma (Tencent), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn) and Paul Jacobs (Qualcomm). The slogan of the conference - “An Interconnected World Shared and Governed by All” - let out the intentions of the Middle Kingdom aren’t limited anymore to see foreign companies comply with its domestic laws; China wants to have its say and aims at having the international community buy into its idea on how internet should be regulated in order to better protect its national security and sovereignty. This purpose was emphasized by Chinese President Xi Jinping in his welcoming message, where he invited other countries to pursue common governance and face these new challenges by recognizing the right to monitor and restrict citizens’ internet use. The same vision was supported in another occasion by Lu Wei, Chairman of State Internet Information Office, who highlighted that this scenario doesn’t differ from the fact that foreign companies willing to operate in the country have to comply with Chinese laws as well as Chinese companies observe domestic laws of the country they decided to establish in. By supporting this point, Chinese government is obviously winking at its censorship practices that have recently acquired a new codename: “Positive energy”. Ren Xianlang, deputy director of the Cyberspace Administration of China, has indeed started using this term to define what should be the main goal of internet companies if they want to operate a proper website management and supervision: spreading positive energy to fight negativity in and towards China. An enormous gap between West and East emerges from this approach to internet governance and China knows it will be hard to win international consensus, especially from countries advocating freedom of speech. Evidence of China’s awareness is the fact that during the World Internet Conference a special Wi-Fi connection was set up to grant access to a Great Firewall Free internet. gLAWcal Team LIBEAC project Monday, 24 November 2014 (Source: The Diplomat)