[governance] China: "we don't agree that the IGF should continue"

[Ian Peter]

This wont be the end of the calls for IGF to be abandoned. One ISOC trustee
(speaking as an individual) was saying the same thing today. And once the
decision making gets out of the sympathetic enclave of IGF attendees a whole
lot of people who don't know much about it are likely to follow calls from
entities like ITU and China. This will include decision makers in
governments who currently appear to be sympathetic.

It doesn't look like IGF will be taking the sort of actions that might help
to promote its position and effectiveness among those who will make
decisions on this (no communications campaign, no structured evaluation
etc).

So I don't think the outcome is a foregone conclusion and we can write off
the Chinese position as a rogue one. This is likely to have some more
interesting twists and turns.

Ian Peter

On 14/05/09 3:39 PM, "Jeremy Malcolm" <jeremy at ciroap.org> wrote:

> For those who didn't follow the open consultation meeting yesterday,
> China became the first to openly oppose the continuation of the IGF:
> 
> "Firstly, we very much appreciate the secretariat for their excellent
> work.  We agree in principle with what has been said by previous
> speakers on the specific aims of the IGF.  We feel that the IGF has
> contributed a great deal in light of its historic mandate ...
> establishing dialogue, exchanging points of view.  But this is not
> enough to solve the problems.  The real problem is that in the field
> of the Internet, there is a monopoly that exists.  And we need to
> solve that problem. It's not by talking about principles merely that
> we can solve this problem.
> 
> But it's not enough for developing countries who don't have enough
> resources and don't have the capacities to participate in this kind of
> dialogue without further commitments being made, which is why the
> points of view of developing countries, especially when it comes to
> Internet governance, their points of view are not sufficiently
> reflected in our discussions, which is why we don't agree that the IGF
> should continue its mandate after the five years are up.
> 
> So we repeat that the delegation of China does not agree with
> extending the mission of the IGF beyond the five years.  We feel that
> after the five years are up, we would need to look at the results that
> have been achieved.  And we need, then, to launch into an
> intergovernmental discussion."
> 
> I have blogged about this today (comments welcome, there or here):
> 
> http://igfwatch.org/discussion-board/china-seeks-to-end-the-igf


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