At UN, China Tries to Influence Fight Over Internet Control

Over the last six months, United Nations diplomats have negotiated over the text of a document set to define the policies and frameworks of how the Internet is governed in the future, and who has a role in the process. The final version presented on Dec 16 before the General Assembly contains a word that civil society groups, businesses and many Western governments oppose: multilateral. Multilateral is code for states making the rules. The inclusion of the word was largely spearheaded by China, which worked to enshrine state control over the Internet in the document, said negotiators who were involved in the process.

During the discussions, representatives from China demanded repeatedly that the word be included, according to participants and draft versions of the document that laid out which countries made each submission. "China has been very active in the negotiations at pushing for more state control over how people get online and who has access to data,” said Peter Micek, global policy and legal counsel for Access Now, a digital-rights organization based in New York that was involved in the negotiation efforts. The outcome document, presented at a United Nations meeting known as the Ten-Year Review of the World Summit on the Information Society, is an indication of how China is trying to assert its influence over how the Internet will be governed.