US ‘bully behaviour’ jibes at China tech conference

WUZHEN, China (Reuters) – At one of the world’s showpiece tech conferences in China, jibes at the United States for its ‘bully behaviour’ lent a Cold War tone to proceedings as trade tension once again reared its ugly head in an event that drew a dearth of top US executives. The state-run World Internet Conference, one of the country’s most prominent tech events, took place this year against a backdrop of rising Sino-US frictions and has been especially overshadowed by Washington’s moves against Chinese tech companies. In 2017, Apple CEO Tim Cook told the conference that the company shared China’s vision for developing a digital economy for openness. But this year’s three-day event, which ended on Tuesday, drew few American luminaries and did not feature a US-China panel like last year, reflecting the heightened tensions between the United States and China. In his opening remarks, China’s propaganda chief Huang Kunming set the overall tone with the criticism that the cyberspace industry was being hindered by a “Cold War” mentality and “bully behaviour,” a barely veiled jibe at the United States.