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Zhuang Rongwen, minister of Cyberspace Administration of China, delivers a speech at a ministerial forum themed "Bridging the Digital Divide" in Wuzhen, East China’s Zhejiang province on Nov 8, which serves as a sub-forum of the fifth World Internet Conference. (Photo by Xu Jingxing/chinadaily.com.cn)

A ministerial forum themed, "Bridging the Digital Divide", was held in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang province, on Thursday, serving as a sub-forum of the fifth World Internet Conference (WIC).

More than 20 speakers from 14 countries, including ministerial officials, heads of telecommunication companies, scholars and experts attended the forum and discussed topics such as "Digital Divide and Economic Development", "Digital Divide and Information Sharing" , and "Role of International Communication on Bridging Digital Divide".

The internet has profoundly changed people's work and life, and has strongly promoted social and economic development. The internet is the cultural result of all human beings, so internet development should benefit everyone, said Zhuang Rongwen, minister of Cyberspace Administration of China, in his speech at the forum.

"Various regions should make concerted efforts to speed up internet popularization and connectivity, and enhance the world's network infrastructure, so as to narrow the digital divide existing among different countries, areas and groups," Zhuang said.

"We should deepen cooperation in internet applications to poverty alleviation and coordinated development and vigorously develop rural e-commerce to turn the internet into a tool to help people become rich and happy and make their dreams come true. We should deepen cooperation in improving network services and promote information services, while making efforts to build a digital government and a smart society and to provide people with more affordable, more convenient and better quality information services," he said.

"We should strengthen cooperation in enhancing people's internet literacy and abilities and strengthen the training of digital skills to help them improve the awareness and capability of network security protection," he added.

Zhuang also said that China would like to join hands with the rest of world to promote more inclusive, comprehensive and balanced internet development through expanding win-win cooperation to more people to take the express train of internet development, share the fruits of internet development and create a happy life.