The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) wants to lay the foundations for a cyber version of the Silk Road project that will connect China with Europe.
“We will push forward the digitalization, information, exchange and collaboration of cyberspace between China and the European Union,” says CAC director Lu Wei at the first China-EU digital cooperation roundtable in Brussels on Monday, reported China Daily.
The roundtable comes a week after Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visited Brussels for the EU-China summit at EU headquarters. At the summit, it was announced that China and the EU will establish a joint investment fund, in order to connect China’s One Belt, One Road initiative with the EU’s 315 billion euro investment plan, reported China Daily.
The visit of China’s top Internet regulator to Brussels seeks to find ways to implement the summit’s proposals. The roundtable will explore new areas of cooperation in 5G, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, big data, e-commerce, digital investment, high-tech startups, smart cities and smart energies.
Organized by the ChinaEU Association for Digital and Internet Society of China, the roundtable brings together more than 50 top-level stakeholders in the information and communications technology industry, including China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, ZTE, Huawei, and Xiaomi.
Lu told the group it must build a platform based on mutual trust and a win-win vision. He said he hopes to see more Chinese Internet companies going out to Europe, and more European enterprises entering the Chinese market, reported China Daily.
“There are still 800 million people unconnected to the Internet in Europe and China, and there is a huge space for our cooperation. We look forward to achieving a better synergy between Europe’s Digital Agenda and China’s Internet Plus Strategy,” said Lu, according to China Daily. “And we will make our contribution to digitalization, cyber development and cyberspace security,” he says.
During the meeting, the China Internet Development Fund signed a letter of intent with ChinaEU. China Unicom and Nokia signed a Memorandum of Understanding, which will deepen their technological cooperation in the next five years.