Cyberspace a key tool for global diplomacy

The world is under threat as never before.

Violent climatic events are increasing year by year, taking lives and livelihoods. The threat of climate change is existential.

The world is also at risk from the gross inequalities that mean 700 million people are living in abject poverty, while 1 percent of the global population own nearly half of the world's wealth. These inequalities are underpinned by a financial system that the United Nations characterizes as favoring the rich and punishing the poor.

But most of all, the world is threatened by the failure of diplomacy. The diplomatic glue that should hold the world community together is losing its adhesiveness. The world is fast moving into disparate camps, split apart into "us" and "them", so misunderstandings and misrepresentations become commonplace, and the ability to address global issues is lost.

China is well aware of these threats and proactively seeking to address them through its proposal on the reform and development of global governance disseminated in September. This makes concrete China's vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind. It proposes strengthening the core role of the United Nations and calls on the international community "to strengthen unity and mutual trust, put development first, and address challenges together".

President Xi Jinping's talks with President Joe Biden in San Francisco and his participation in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting last week are illustrative of China's commitment to good international relations. Moreover, the theme of the APEC meeting, "Creating a Resilient and Sustainable Future for All", catches the essence of China's global aspirations.

China's proposals on global governance emphasize the need "to promote the exchange and mutual learning between cultures and civilizations". This is essential to enhance mutual understanding and friendship between people of all countries and to build international consensus for cooperation and progress.

Historically, diplomacy has taken place in the rarefied atmosphere of international conferences, via diplomatic exchanges carried in diplomatic bags and in once smoke-filled rooms away from the public gaze. Diplomats were presumed to represent the views of the people. Now, in the age of the internet, the views of the people can shape the deliberations of diplomats. The Chinese concept of consultative democracy can be extended internationally.

China has called for a new democratic model of international relations so that "international rules are written by all", "global affairs are governed by all" and "the fruits of development are shared by all".The internet provides a foundation for the realization of this aspiration by allowing a globally shared future to be built from the bottom up, person to person, community to community, and nation to nation.

China is already a world leader in building a person-focused internet, with over a billion internet users and hundreds of millions of "netizens "participating in social networks with multiple interest groups. Live-streaming has created a business ecology enabling small producers to access large markets, while short videos have become the medium of choice for sharing cultural experience. The 2023 My China Story short-video competition organized by China Daily attracted over 57,000 entries from more than 80 countries.

In earlier times, Mao Zedong recognized the importance of cinema in communicating with the people. He also noted that, although "human social life is the sole source of literature and art", art itself is "more organized and concentrated, more typical and more idealized, and therefore has greater universality". Today the art of communication lies in cyberspace.

The 2023 World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, was aptly themed "building a community with a shared future in cyberspace". The internet allows the world to be informed about China's culture, its history, its myths and morality, and about Chinese life as lived today. Video has democratized art. Chinese netizens can also learn about other cultures directly, not mediated through institutions that process culture to achieve commercial or ideological primacy.

We must exploit cyber communications to create a human community with a shared future. With misunderstanding and prejudice dispelled, netizens — global citizens — will be able to identify mutual interests. Barriers that deny access to information and knowledge inhibit the development of this global community. They create "epistemic injustice" — unequal access to knowledge and understanding — and increase the vulnerability of those denied access to information and influence.

But the price of universal access must be perpetual vigilance. This is not just a matter of avoiding digital viruses or falling afoul of criminal scams. Rather, it is because powerful economic and ideological forces reside in cyberspace that seek to instruct people what to think about, even what specifically to think.

Universal cyber education is a prerequisite for building a democracy of shared interests to challenge the political and economic hegemony that threatens the world's ability to come together to resolve global threats. People must be taught never to take anything at face value, never to believe anything at first sight.

Rather, they should be provided with the tools to critically evaluate websites, items and content before finally seeking further validation. This means determining the credibility of the source, the nature of its funding, its ideological stance and its raison d'etre.

It means questioning the logicality of arguments, the validity of premises, the quality of evidence, and the nature of the biases. Search questions should be determined in advance, being specific enough to exclude the irrelevant, but sufficiently inclusive to capture all that is of importance.

From the ability to extract knowledge from information should come the realization that adversaries are made, not born, and that individual well-being is best achieved by prioritizing shared concerns over vested interests. Via the internet, the world's people will demand more of diplomacy: namely, a peaceful world with a shared, sustainable future, a planet fit to be called our collective home.

The author is a professor of sociology at Beijing Normal University and a professor emeritus and emeritus fellow at Green Templeton College of Oxford University. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.