Beijing will fully support Hong Kong in "riding the tide of global digital transition", according to a senior national political adviser.
That came as he criticised "technological bullying" as well as the zero-sum game by some countries.
The remarks came on the opening day of the World Internet Conference Asia Pacific Summit in Hong Kong, the first time the conference is being held in Hong Kong.
At the opening ceremony, Wang Yong, vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, noted said the digital transition has become a driving force in boosting industrial productivity.
He added that China is committed to sharing the opportunities brought about by the development of the internet industry with other regions in the world, noting that mainland firms such as DeepSeek, which has shared its open-source AI models with the global tech community, aim to remove such digital gaps between nations.
"We have worked with other countries to build a fair and 'just cyberspace governance system, and we firmly uphold the basic concepts and principles enshrined in the United Nations charter," Wang told some 1,000 participants.
"We call for respecting the sovereignty and management model of each country's network and rejecting the zero-sum game and technological bullying," he added.
While Wang did not name the parties involved in such practices, Beijing has been calling for relations between China and the United States to not be a zero sum game and for both sides to seek common ground to gain a "win-win" outcome.
Echoing Wang, Zheng Yanxiong, the director of the central government's liaison office in Hong Kong, said the SAR plays a critical role in driving the industry's development in the region.
"Hong Kong is a pioneer in the development of the internet," he said.
"It has not only its traditional advantages being a global financial, shipping and trade centre but also new advantages such as artificial intelligence research and development, accumulated talent and industrial synergy," he said.
"Moreover, it has unique advantages such as institutional innovation, trilingualism, cultural inclusiveness, and internal and external communication... It will certainly be a new development highland of the internet industry."
Separately, Zheng called on the SAR to play its role by speeding up the building of an ecosystem for digital-related sectors, covering artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing and block chains, that spans upstream and downstream industries.
He also urged the SAR to give full play to the advantages of the "One Country, Two Systems" principle, establishing a cross-border data flow mechanism that's also in line with international rules, and promote the safe and orderly cross-border data flow and sharing of resources.
The summit ends on Tuesday.
China 'fully backs HK ramping up digital transition'
2025-04-14 HKT 15:44
