Baku, November 9, AZERTAC

A ministerial forum themed, "Bridging the Digital Divide", was held in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang province, serving as a sub-forum of the fifth World Internet Conference (WIC), according to chinadaily.com.cn.

More than 20 speakers from 14 countries, including ministerial officials, heads of telecommunication companies, scholars and experts attended the forum and discussed topics such as "Digital Divide and Economic Development", "Digital Divide and Information Sharing" , and "Role of International Communication on Bridging Digital Divide".

The internet has profoundly changed people's work and life, and has strongly promoted social and economic development. The development of internet should benefit everyone, said Zhuang Rongwen, minister of Cyberspace Administration of China, in his speech at the forum.

"Various regions should make concerted efforts to speed up internet popularization and connectivity, and enhance the world's network infrastructure, so as to narrow the digital divide existing among different countries, areas and groups," Zhuang said.

"We should deepen cooperation in internet applications to poverty alleviation and coordinated development and vigorously develop rural e-commerce to turn the internet into a tool to help people become rich and happy and make their dreams come true. We should deepen cooperation in improving network services and promote information services, while making efforts to build a digital government and a smart society and to provide people with more affordable, more convenient and better quality information services," he said.

Zhou Shuchun, publisher and editor-in-chief of China Daily, said in his speech that in accordance with President Xi’s proposal of "taking common progress as the driving force and taking win-win as the goal", the "digital divide" should be eliminated in promoting building "a community with a shared future for mankind" to change the "new variable" of the unbalanced development of the internet into a "new increment" in eliminating the gap between rich and poor.

Zhou said the "digital divide" should be bridged in the process of maintaining and deepening economic globalization and the formation of a global digital market should be promoted to give the digital economy a new momentum in the new stage of economic globalization.

In addition, the "digital divide" should be bridged in promoting the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative to let the "Digital Silk Road" become a road to benefit the people of all countries, Zhou added.

During the keynote speech session, Chinese and foreign guests and experts delivered keynote speeches on the topics including "Digital Divide and Economic Development", "Digital Divide and Information Sharing", "the Role of International Communication in Bridging the Digital Divide", and shared their unique opinions and innovative ideas to jointly offer suggestions for bridging the digital divide.