Chinese Vice Premier Huang Ju told a gathering of 20,000 government officials and information business leaders around the world on Thursday that equal emphasis should be attached to freedom of speech and the rule of law in the progress of digitalization.

Huang is heading a Chinese delegation including telecommunication, trade officials and executives of China's top IT business giants for a three-day World Summit on the Information Society which kicked off in the Tunisian capital Tunis on Wednesday.

"We need to, on the one hand, guarantee freedom of speech and safeguard human rights and dignity, and on the other, let the rule of law prevail and stress social responsibility and obligation in order to create a harmonious, healthy and orderly environment for the development of the information society," Huang said at a Thursday meeting.

As the information communication technologies become more indispensable to people's life and their applications keep moving into new frontiers, the negative impacts that may arise from insecure networks and information have become increasingly evident, he added.

Huang delivered an urgent call for international cooperation to address the issue of Internet security.

"Strengthening network and information security is an important guarantee for building the information society," Huang said, stressing that the world was in an urgent need of an effective mechanism "to prevent and crack down on criminal activities like economic fraud, violence, terrorism and those endangering national security with the use of information technologies and resources."

He also said full respect for differences in social systems and cultural diversity was the basic norm to guide the development of the information society.

"Given the numerous differences among countries in history, culture and national situation, it is imperative to fully understand and respect the right of all countries to choose their own social systems and development paths, work to dispel misgivings and estrangement and draw upon each other's strength for greater cooperation in the advancement of the information society," he emphasized.

Huang also called upon the international community to pay greater attention to the widening digital divide between developed and developing countries as well as between different regions within the developing countries, urging for concerted efforts to gradually reverse this situation.

Meanwhile, Huang said developing countries should primarily rely on their own efforts to seek and explore development models suited to their own national conditions, but stressing developed countries are duty-bound to support developing countries, especially the least developed countries, in terms of finance, technology and human resources.

The Tunis summit, the second phase of the UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), has grouped over 10,000 participants from 173 countries, including business leaders, technology experts, civil society representatives and dozens of heads of state and government leaders.

The first phase of the WSIS was held in Geneva in December 2003, at which Declaration of Principles and an Action Plan were adopted setting a goal of extending the Internet benefits to all by 2015.

China has seen rapid growth in its information and communication sector in the past decade. It now has more than 700 million subscribers to fixed-line or cellular phones. More than 100 million people have access to the internet and over 53 million subscribers have broadband access.