BEIJING, Nov. 20 -- This month witnesses two significant activities concerning Internet: the First “World Internet Conference” being held in Wuzhen, an ancient town of east China's Zhejiang province, and the First China Cyber Security Week to take place in Beijing.

Cyber security will be prominent topics in the two activities as the situation in the world, including China, voices no optimism if you click related key words into search engines for more information.

Grim situation in China’s cyber security

A series of investigations by the Chinese government this year confirmed that China is now the target of snooping activities, especially by U.S. intelligence agencies, slammed by China's Internet Media Research Center as " unscrupulous".

In 2013, news and documents revealed by U.S. National Security Agency (NSA)'s former contractor Edward Snowden suggested the Chinese government and its leaders, companies and scientific research institutes had fallen targets of NSA's secret surveillance program PRISM.

It is also in last year that host IPs infected with Trojan or Botnet reached 11.4 million in China, and about 762,000 websites were planted with backdoors, including 2,425 government sites.

Meanwhile, privacy and interests of ordinary netizens and cell phone users have been infringed and undermined repeatedly by hackers in and out of China.

Behind cyber crimes and attacks

For one thing, crimes in the cyber space are supposed to be attributed to its anarchy, for no one could dominate this space, neither could a government without competent technologies, powerful legal system and potential personnel.

Especially in this world of anonymity and virtuality, netizens feel free to vent anything, leaving huge, huge room for rumors, defamation and insane verbal abuse.

For another, the Internet field is borderless. That is why NSA agents could hack into computers and mobile phones of people and institutions around the world without hesitation and limitation.

Besides we must bear in mind that the western countries enjoy advanced high-tech.

Of all 13 root servers that support the operation of Internet around world, ten of them are set in America.

In addition, a great numbers of core Internet resources, including the absolute monopoly over IP allocation and the control of domain names lie in the hand of the U. S.

Major social websites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin that sit in the U. S. could also be used as engines to wage public opinion wars.

Cyber space, a world should be governed by rule of law

There is no denying that Internet has brought great benefit to China and its people, both material and spiritual, since China was connected with the international Internet two decades ago. However, the grim situations of cyber security continue tolling the warning bell.

On Oct. 26, Lu Wei, Minister of the Cyberspace Administration of China, pledged to govern online space in accordance with the law, echoing the CPC's embrace of rule of law at a key plenum.

Indeed, cyber space should not be exempt from rule of law, which could be viewed from three levels: individual, state and international.

For individual netizen and companies, their lawful rights of free speech and online privacy should be protected and respected.

Any rumors and harmful online activities should be prohibited, and the offenders punished.

The good news is that plenty of rumor-mongers have been punished since a judicial interpretation by the Supreme Court and Procuratorate in September 2013, which stipulates that defamation charges can be leveled against the authors of online posts that are deemed rumors and viewed by more than 5,000 users or retweeted more than 500 times.

For our country, we are in dire need of a mechanism to coordinate various departments like Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, academic institutions and researchers to stop cyber attacks and crimes.

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Internet security and informatization is a major strategic issue concerning a country's security and development as well as people's life and work. People’s awareness to observe laws should be raised through national programs and activities.

And nationwide incentive and punitive mechanisms should also be operated so as to encourage more netizens to abide by laws.

The international community, well-aware of the fact that Internet attacks pose great dangers to national sovereignty, security and interests, should unite and work towards an international Internet governance system.

In his Message of Congratulations to this time's World Internet Conference, President Xi said, "China is ready to work with other countries to deepen international cooperation, respect sovereignty on the Internet, uphold cyber security, and jointly build a cyberspace of peace, security, openness and cooperation and an International Internet governance system of multilateralism, democracy and transparency."

Cyber security and privacy require all-around efforts from individual to national and international levels, and no netizen and country could cross the limits of law, nor could they undermine the spirit of law. United, we will stop these impudent activities from the cradle.