China’s government-backed internet conference is commemorating 30 years of online access in the country this year, as Beijing seeks to revive growth in the sector amid numerous economic pressures.
The three-day China Internet Conference (CIC) hosted by the Internet Society of China, a government-backed industry association, kicks off on Tuesday in Beijing. It is set to showcase the country’s achievements as the world’s largest internet market, with about 1 billion users, and to explore new opportunities for development, according to the agenda published to the event’s website.
Major industry topics will be covered at the event, according to the organiser, including artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things, computing power, e-government and data security. One session scheduled for Thursday is specifically on large language models (LLMs), the technology behind AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Three decades on from the launch of China’s first internet connection, the country is now grappling with an intensifying technology rivalry with the US. As China’s tech sector faces challenges such as limited access to advanced chips and US venture capital, the internet industry is still recovering from a two-year crackdown in the country that began at the end of 2020.
Beijing’s efforts to rein in capital expansion kneecapped some of the country’s biggest internet players. The value of Tencent Holdings, the country’s most valuable tech giant, is just a fraction of the biggest US tech firms such as Microsoft and Apple.
A major theme of this year’s CIC is looking back at internet development since the country was brought online on April 20, 1994. That 64 kilobit-per-second line from the National Computing and Networking Facility of China was connected to the network of Sprint, a US telecoms firm, officially marking the country’s integration with the global internet.
After decades of unbridled growth that gave birth to some of the world’s largest tech firms – some of whom are now considered national tech champions – the Chinese internet industry has recently been reeling from a combination of factors, contributing to stalled growth. Unfavourable government policy seeking to rein in the power of tech giants and shifting consumer behaviour amid a slow economy have weighed on the industry.
The Chinese government has sought to soften its tone regarding internet firms since the end of the pandemic, asking the companies to play a bigger role in the economy by creating jobs and engaging in international competition.
The CIC’s official website does not list the attendees for this year’s event, but previous participants include officials from government bodies including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Cyberspace Administration of China.
