【09.11.13华尔街时报】Ahead of Obama Trip: Briefing for China’s Bloggers

magicboy

Ahead of Obama Trip: Briefing for China’s Bloggershttp://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009/11/13/ahead-of-obama-trip-briefing-for-chinas-bloggers/
November 13, 2009, 4:15 AM ET   Sky Canaves


China’s bloggers are a focus of organizers of the Obama visit, echoing similar efforts by the administration to use social media tools to communicate with Americans.
On Thursday, U.S. state department officials held simultaneous press briefings for a select group of predominantly Chinese bloggers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, giving a run-down of the U.S. president’s China schedule and took questions from the bloggers.
The attendee list included many influential bloggers, such as journalist Michael Anti, who blogs about freedom of the press, and Rao Jin, whose Anti-CNN Web site scrutinizes China coverage by CNN and other foreign media. Jeremy Goldkorn, of Danwei.org, represented the English-language China blogosphere. The group also included a couple of big names from China’s Internet world beyond blogs, such as Gary Wang, CEO and co-founder of online video sharing site tudou.com, and Peking University journalism professor and author Hu Yong.
In true social media fashion, several of the bloggers twittered the briefing, which was on the record. They also spoke openly about issues of concern to them: China’s Internet restrictions. One blogger asked if Obama would be able to use Twitter and Facebook while in China. (Both are accessible only by proxy in China). Another suggested that Obama visit a local Internet café so that he could understand the difficulties faced by ordinary people in accessing information.
To be sure, the bloggers’ concerns reflect a small corner of Chinese life and one participant said that most people in China are more concerned with their freedom to do business and their freedom to travel to America than with their freedom of speech. An embassy official replied that the composition of the group was intentional, a chance to hear Chinese voices from outside the mainstream.
Still in doubt, though, is whether the Obama administration will get its stated wish to hear more of these voices during the president’s planned “town hall” meeting with young people in Shanghai. Officials in the Chinese and American governments are still negotiating the terms of the meeting, scheduled for Monday afternoon, leading to some speculation that the event may be cancelled.

no7of2001

终于提到这次见面会了。