China Aims to Expand Censored Web

China’s top Internet regulator, Lu Wei, minister of the State Council’s Cyberspace Administration of China, reiterated that Internet controls are a sovereign issue and that his government views the online arena as one that should be a “free and open place, with rules to follow.”

Another policy maker, Ma Kai was more blunt: The Internet is “a two-edged sword,” he said. Delegates repeatedly cited a desire to ensure the Internet makes dreams come true. That is a reference to President Xi Jinping ’s guiding philosophy of a “China Dream,” which he has stamped on Internet policy by elevating Web development to the core of China’s “overall national security outlook” and by calling on the industry to generate “positive energy.”