Whitfield Diffie, winner of the 2015 Turing Award, delivers a keynote speech. [Photo by Wang Chengmeng/chinadaily.com.cn]

Chinese government officials and technology experts from home and abroad shared their views about what is held in store for cyberspace at The Foresee the Future of Internet Forum on Day 2 of the 5th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang province, on Nov 8. 

The forum was co-chaired by Wu Hequan, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of the Internet Society of China, and Michael Wang, anchor at the China Global Television Network. 

Among the tremendous opportunities and challenges brought by the emerging technologies, blockchain, a digital information database that can be shared and used over a public network which has been widely acknowledged as being instrumental to the future of the internet, was one of the heated topics at the forum. 

Whitfield Diffie, winner of the 2015 Turing Award, illustrated seven security issues that were associated with blockchain, while Silvio Micali, winner of the 2012 Turing Award, put forward several possible solutions to these issues, including building private blockchains instead of public ones.

David Patterson, winner of the 2017 Turing Award, speaks at the forum. [Photo by Wang Chengmeng/chinadaily.com.cn]

Chinese innovation in the internet attracted much attention at the forum. David Patterson, winner of the 2017 Turing Award, exemplified Alibaba and WeChat when explaining his idea of the cloud and edge being the future of the internet, with Alibaba standing for the cloud and WeChat for the edge, or the user side. 

The success that this innovation has brought and how it can offer new possibilities to the development of the internet was also lauded at the forum. Addressing the attendees, chairman and CEO of Chinese technology giant Xiaomi Lei Jun highlighted how the world's fourth largest smartphone maker has benefited greatly from the opportunities brought about by the constantly evolving internet industry. 

The past seven years have seen Xiaomi rising from an unknown start-up to an electronics giant generating an annual revenue of over 114.6 billion yuan ($16.5 billion) in 2017. 

"We have put much effort into innovation and always keep a discerning eye on the internet. Our focus on the global market has also reaped rewards with our overseas revenue accounting for 28 percent of the company's total last year," Lei said. 

Xiaomi's practices coincided with the idea of Zhuang Rongwen, chairman of the Cyberspace Administration of China. The official suggested at the forum that the internet should move towards a more people-oriented, innovation-driven and internationally-connected way of operation and set up its own industrial ecosystem.

The Foresee the Future of Internet Forum is held on Nov 8, Day 2 of the 5th World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo by Wang Chengmeng/chinadaily.com.cn]