WSJ : Chinese Bloggers Briefed on Clinton Speech

URL： http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/01/22/chinese-bloggers-briefed-on-clinton-speech/tab/article/

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her Thursday speech said the U.S. is committed to devoting the diplomatic, economic, and technological resources necessary to advance Internet freedom, what she termed “21st-century statecraft.”
One example of what she may have been referring to played out in Beijing Friday, as state department officials reached out to Chinese bloggers for a Q&A session on America’s foreign policy 2.0.

Associated PressArtist-blogger-activist Ai Weiwei was among the participant’s at Friday’s briefing

The briefing was held simultaneously at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and at the consulates in Shanghai and Guangzhou, with participants connected via video conferencing and an online Web cast set up by the U.S. officials. Bloggers invited to the event came with a diverse range of political viewpoints, from artist Ai Weiwei, who is often critical of the Chinese government, to Rao Jin, the man behind the Anti-CNN Web site, representing a small but influential portion of China’s 384 million Internet users.

The bloggers questions reflected a keen interest in America’s global Internet policy. They asked for more details on the U.S. government’s plans to fund software that will help circumvent censorship and whether officials will press companies such as Microsoft and Cisco to follow in Google’s footsteps by standing up to China.
Critical questions were on the agenda as well: Why does the U.S. allow the export of technologies that are used to build the Great Firewall? What about American hackers attacking Chinese computers, or U.S. spammers and fraudsters who target innocent people around the world?

The responses from American officials largely restated Clinton’s position as outlined in Thursday’s speech and emphasized the separation of business and government in the U.S.

The final question, raised by Guangzhou-based blogger and Twitterer Wen Yunchao, underscored the highly networked nature of the audience. As the bloggers were gathering for their meeting with the U.S. officials, China formally responded the Clinton speech, opposing the criticism of Chinese Internet policies as “against the facts” and harmful to bilateral relations.

“We urge the U.S. side to respect the facts, and to stop using the so-called Internet freedom issue to make groundless charges against China,”said foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu, in a statement on the ministry’s Web site. Wen, alerted of Ma’s statements via Twitter, asked the U.S. officials what they thought of the response. (They answered, diplomatically, that the speech was not intended to single out China and that China should not take offense to criticism).
After the meeting, another blogger, Zhou Shuguang, shared his impressions: “It shows that the U.S. government and Beijing have totally different ways of working. In the U.S., the government pays attention to public opinion and they know how to promote a policy through opinion leaders. That’s why they are now paying extensive attention to active Chinese Web users.”

The state department held a similar briefing in China in November, ahead of U.S. President Obama’s first visit to China, and it has conducted similar outreach events in other countries.

–Sky Canaves and Juliet Ye