When a major Chinese-American Internet conference convenes in Washington on Tuesday, a middle-aged Communist Party propaganda chief will be seated amid a room full of tech industry executives, American officials and web luminaries.
The chief, Lu Wei, might look like the odd man out, but he is certain to command attention. As China's new Internet czar, he is the doorkeeper for American Internet companies to the lucrative China market, as well as the ambassador of an assertive new policy in which China claims the right to block websites, censor content and track users within its borders. For the Americans, it may present a tricky balancing act, but for Lu, it is his moment, and one those who know him expect that he will take full advantage of.
Given to making stolid, jargon-laden speeches, Lu, 54, could not be more different from the new generation of businessmen who built the cyberspace sector he oversees, and with whom he has come into frequent combat.
But in his rise to become China's Internet custodian, he has demonstrated a canny awareness of the power of the Internet and social media, while also proving adept at the far older art of manipulating public opinion to benefit the party.
Since taking over the State Internet Information Office in 2013 and becoming the director of a powerful Internet committee headed by President Xi Jinping last May, he has ratcheted up restrictions in what is already the world's most sophisticated system of online censorship. He has curbed the country's freewheeling social media pioneers by issuing stern warnings in private meetings and severely restricting the accounts of some in a campaign that led to the detention of one online celebrity. On his watch, the government increased blocks on foreign websites and issued new regulations to restrict sharing on social media and increase censorship of popular online video sites.
He unapologetically defended China's need for stronger Internet controls at a trade conference in London in June, and at an October news conference in Beijing, he made it plain that an unfettered Facebook could not expect to operate in China.
"I didn't say Facebook could not enter China, but nor did I say that it could," he said. "Foreign Internet companies can come to China if they abide by the law. We could not allow any companies to enter China's market and make money while hurting the country."
His style - loud, direct and gregarious - was on display last month when he presided over China's first World Internet Conference, a gathering of Chinese politicians, top Chinese Internet company chiefs and executives from many major Western tech companies.
He smoked cigars with a Cuban telecom official, power-walked in sweats for exercise at the conference site in the whitewashed canal village of Wuzhen and canceled a presentation to dash off to greet Premier Li Keqiang in the nearby town of Hangzhou.
"He's very confident and very definitely a politician," said the person, who declined to be identified because his meetings with Lu were confidential. "He's a smoker, he drinks, he's up late, he's up early, he's a workaholic. He's like a ringmaster, trying to be at the center of everything and juggling a million things at once, and he's pretty good at it."
He also delivered a message those at the US-China Internet Industry Forum in Washington can expect to hear this week. He called repeatedly for "respect of national sovereignty" on the Internet, arguing that nations should be left to regulate cyberspace within their borders as they see fit. This position clashes with those advocated by human rights groups, which claim free online expression as a basic right, and business interest groups, which call for equal market access for Internet and technology companies.
Lu spent his early career as bureau chief of the state-run Xinhua News Agency in southern Guangxi Province, a position where his flair for showmanship caught the eye of the Beijing headquarters, not least because he made sure that an official car drove to the steps of the plane when an out of town boss arrived. He ascended the ranks to become secretary general and vice bureau chief at the agency's headquarters, and in 2011 was promoted to vice mayor of Beijing and chief of the capital's propaganda department.
There he began to expound his views on the Internet. In a July 2010 essay in Seeking Truth, a party philosophy journal, he argued that China should bolster its control over the way information is disseminated internationally in new technologies, like the Internet.
After explaining how "phony or distorted information can mislead capital and disrupt markets," he added: "Without information security, there is no financial security, there's no economic security and there's no national security in the truest sense."
Later that year, the Arab Spring provided concrete examples. In 2011, the spread of reports about a high-speed rail crash in Wenzhou, China, showed how Chinese social networks could evade the country's censorship regime. Then in 2013, leaks by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden about United States government surveillance showed how vulnerable countries like China were to cyber-snooping.
Last year, while still in the Beijing government, he exhorted the city's 60,000 propaganda officials to make better use of social media, like the Weibo microblog platform. "Watch Weibo, open a Weibo account, send Weibo messages, study Weibo," he said, according to Xinhua.
"Lu Wei was the right man, at the right position, at the right moment," said Rogier Creemers, a research scholar at Oxford.
"The traditional guard that ran the propaganda department were slightly too hidebound. The idea was they needed clever people who knew what they were talking about. Suddenly someone makes a public stand that shows he understands the Internet and social media as well as its international expansion."
When he took over the State Internet Information Office, one of Mr. Lu's first challenges was reining in China's freewheeling social media. He held a series of well-publicised dinners at fancy Beijing restaurants with some of China's most well-known social media icons. Known as the Big V's, for verified account, some had millions of online followers and had already shown how they could turn sensitive subjects - like forced relocations and environmental problems - into national debates that upset the Communist Party.
He warned them to take responsibility for their actions, and later, on national television, he instructed eight prominent bloggers in blunt terms to be more positive.
One well known online personality, the American businessman Charles Xue, was later detained for eight months on prostitution charges, though a torrent of official media reports left little doubt the government's anger at Mr. Xue was based on his online writings.
Mr. Lu purged some of the Big V's by closing down or limiting the functions of their accounts, and he made the threat of further consequences apparent to others at the dinners he hosted.
Last year, analysts say, he masterminded a Chinese Supreme Court decision that limits to 500 the number of times a post can be reposted without the original author's assuming legal responsibility. Because spreading false rumours is a crime, the decision means that anyone who writes a popular but subversive post could be held liable and face prison time.
Such measures drew the attention of the Chinese president, analysts say, who rewarded him with the job of director of the new Central Internet Security and Informatization Leading Group, a group headed by the president and charged with strengthening Internet controls, enhancing protection against foreign cyberattacks and developing new technologies.
The group is expected to produce a policy document, the analysts said, that will seek to strike a balance between what the government views as a need to further censor domestic social media and block foreign sites, while allowing enough openness for the economy to grow.
Mr. Lu, who did not respond to a fax to his office seeking comment for this article, now has his sights on something bigger: gaining a substantial say for China in international oversight of the web. His conference in Wuzhen was largely about that, and he is likely to dwell on it in Washington.
The conference, however, also suggested the limits of his approach when he has to depend on diplomacy and not the heavy hand of government.
Late on the last evening, a draft declaration calling for respect for Internet sovereignty was slipped under the doors of participants. In what appeared to be an attempt to rush through a last-minute approval, the document said any feedback and revisions should be submitted by 8 a.m.
In a closed-door meeting the next day, when several Western representatives protested, Mr. Lu insisted that some attendees agreed to the document and therefore it could be considered a consensus, according to a person who attended the meeting, who did not want to be identified because it was confidential.
After further debate without agreement, Mr. Lu showed some of the pugnacity he is known for. He refused to compromise, leaving the conference without the closing declaration he wanted.
"It was a tense meeting," the person said. "He got up and walked out. He said he had other meetings he had to be in."
©2014 The New York Times News Service
