Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern made a surprise appearance on the front page of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post this weekend, shaking hands with Chinese premier Li Keqiang at an Internet conference in eastern China.

Mr Ahern was there to urge the global community should be cautious about the risks brought by new internet technology such as mobile finance, according to local media.

The conference was attended by around 1,000 industry representatives, including the founders of China's three biggest web companies, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, as well as representatives from Apple, Microsoft and Qualcomm.

He is a regular visitor to China in his capacity as chairman of the Ireland China Co-operation Council (ICCC), which is co-chaired with former senator Cyprian Brady.

The idea of China hosting a conference on Internet policy has raised a number of eyebrows overseas because of China’s restrictive approach to the Internet, with heavy censorship and a system of controls known as “The Great Firewall of China” that blocks sites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and many news sites.

“Public opinion in the West generally depicts China’s Internet policy as “restricting freedom.”

This stereotype is simply unable to describe the whole picture of the vigorous, diversified growth of the Chinese Internet.

As a latecomer in Internet development, China seeks a balance in the dual task of accelerating growth and ensuring security, ran an editorial in the Global Times newspaper.

At the conference, Premier Li was quoted by the South China Morning Post as saying:

“We are embracing the internet and developing the sector along market lines so that market entry can be autonomous, the mechanism be market-based and companies can compete fairly.”