To foster a bottom-up, participatory, open, transparent, and inclusive platform where government, private sector, tech-community, civil society, and all stakeholders could exert their respective roles in enhancing internet security, accelerating industry development, advancing good internet governance, and promoting digital economy, China IGF was established by the Internet Society of China in Beijing on May 28, 2020.

China IGF is the National IGF in China registered under the UN IGF’s National and Regional IGF initiatives (NRIs). It serves as a platform to promoting the discussions on issues of the Internet Governance arena for the Chinese community as well as facilitating the exchange and cooperation between the Chinese and international community, and sharing China's Internet governance best practice and experiences.

As the COVID-19 situation, the inaugural meeting of China IGF was moved to online. Officials from Chinese governments as Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), Minsitry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), Cybserspace Administration of China (CAC) joined the meeting and delivered congratulatory remarks.

The 27 founding members of China IGF were multi-stakeholder structured, including Tencent, Baidu, Alibaba, JD, Toutiao, Sina, Huawei, China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Cybersecurity Association of China, Fuxi Institution, CCIT of China Association for Science and Technology, XinhuaNet, People’s Posts and Telecommunications News etc.

A multi-stakeholder advisory and steering group was also set up to provide professional advice for the work of China IGF. Mr. Xinmin GAO, was elected as the Chair of the steering group. The members of the group mainly came from renowned domestic research and academic institutes.    

The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) serves to bring people together from various stakeholder groups as equals, in discussions on public policy issues relating to the Internet. The first session of IGF was held in Athens, Greece in 2006.

Official Web: http://igfchina.caict.ac.cn/

(Rui ZHONG)