China’s propaganda chief Huang Kunming stated that a cold war mentality and bully behavior hinders mutual trust in cyberspace. He made this statement at  the World Internet Conference in the eastern Chinese town of Wuzhen.

Huang Kunming, head of the publicity department of China’s ruling Communist Party, also said that under the pretext of national security, some countries had launched cyber attacks on countries and enterprises. However he didn’t specifically name any countries.

 “The Cold War thinking and zero sum game, this has stopped and hindered exchanges in cyberspace. Also, bully behavior in cyberspace has had a negative impact on mutual trust, by using national security as an excuse, some countries have attacked some countries and enterprises. This has increased the uncertainty, opposition and negativity in cyberspace.”

A rising tension between U.S and China is happening already for quiet some time. In this context the state-run World Internet Conference, one of the country’s most prominent tech conferences is highly relevant this year. The escalating trade war between U.S and China resulted in U.S blacklisting some Chinese Tech companies and forcing heavy tariffs on them. China has also retaliated in the same manner. Washington also barred some U.S firms from exporting from China.

The World Internet Conference in China is well attended by major tech companies including  Alibaba Group, Baidu Inc, Microsoft Corp and Qualcomm Inc . China tries to promote its own ideology for global internet governance and defend its highly-restricted cyberspace. China aims for major role in global internet governance and is of the opinion that countries should be given free space to censor their internet with their own rules and regulations. China has already banned services from Facebook and Google in the country.  The annual conference is organized by Internet censorship bureau and the Cyberspace Administration of China