Copyright Foreign Policy
In the pantheon of global tech gatherings, few have grown as quickly or at the scale of Web Summit. The conference, which began in Dublin in 2009 before moving its annual flagship edition to the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, in 2016, has become a prime fixture of the conference circuit—so much so that conference organizers warned attendees in an email last week that Lisbon’s airport was running short of private jet landing slots. “We would strongly advise flying commercial into Lisbon,” they advised. “We apologize for the bad news.” Web Summit expects nearly 72,000 attendees to descend on its Lisbon event this week. That includes 268 government delegations representing 82 countries such as Brazil, Angola, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and Mexico, as well as the usual suspects like the United States, Canada, and Germany. (Full disclosure: This reporter spoke at the conference, which covered his travel costs.) But this year, one perhaps surprising country delegation made its debut: China. China’s Ministry of Commerce inked a partnership with Web Summit, taking over one of the conference’s 15 stages for roughly 90 minutes to host a mini “China Summit.” Those 90 minutes were bookended by speeches from two Chinese officials—Jianchao Wang, deputy director-general at the Chinese Cyberspace Administration’s Bureau of International Cooperation, and Guangyao Zhu, the deputy head of the Chinese Commerce Ministry’s Department of Trade in Services and Commercial Services. Wang described China’s Web Summit debut as a “pioneer event,” saying it had “built an important bridge” to the world. “While pursuing our own development, China has also actively promoted the sharing of internet development opportunities among countries,” he said. “China has always advocated the paths of openness, cooperation, and common progress, and is willing to share our development experience and enhance exchanges and cooperation with other countries.” Zhu further outlined China’s incentive for attending the conference, saying it “not only provides the platform for the exhibition and exchange of global cutting-edge science and technology, but also provides a new impetus for innovation and cooperation.” Both officials’ comments reflect the ways in which China has increasingly sought to position itself as a competitor or even alternative to U.S. technological dominance, as well as a more responsible steward of global tech standards and cooperation. Its use of the Lisbon conference as a conduit for those arguments was evidenced in part by its participation close on the heels of China’s own World Internet Conference in the city of Wuzhen. U.S. political and tech leaders recognize and even fear China’s rise. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose company has been aggressively lobbying to sell more of its semiconductor chips to China, told the Financial Times last week that “China is going to win the AI race”—comments he later partially backtracked on. Web Summit attendees appeared to be incredibly curious, at the very least. Tuesday’s China programming was delivered to an audience in the high hundreds, with standing room only for much of the first hour—even during a comparatively dry discussion of China’s 15th five-year plan. A few feet away, a smaller but equally enthusiastic crowd gathered to gawk at and take videos of two humanoid robots from Chinese start-up Unitree, one of which entertained them with a clumsy but somewhat endearing break dance. The Chinese government’s involvement in Web Summit (though the country’s tech giants—such as Huawei, Tencent, and Alibaba—have participated separately in past editions) came about through conference founder Paddy Cosgrave’s travels through the country around six weeks ago. Cosgrave effusively praised China’s technological prowess in a series of LinkedIn posts—including one that said that “China has won the 21st Century. There is no great power competition. It’s over.” He also announced his intention of hosting a Web Summit in China in 2027, adding to the conference’s global editions in Rio de Janeiro, Vancouver, and Doha. “I think it’s very difficult to deny or ignore the achievements of China, not just over the last decade but even in the last year,” he said on Tuesday while opening the China Summit. “I think it’s very important that Web Summit provides opportunities for all of our attendees not just to meet with those building the cutting-edge companies that are emerging from China but also opportunities to hear from speakers with diverse views on why China is achieving what it is achieving.”
