Information Security Blog

China to US: shut up about “so-called Internet freedom”
In the wake of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s major speech yesterday on Internet freedom, a speech in which she called out countries like Egypt, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Iran, and China, most governments have yet to respond. China, however, was quick to reply after dealing with the Google issue for a week already.

Here’s what has happened in 24 turbulent hours.

Wide open. It didn’t take China long to respond to Clinton’s call to tear down the Great Firewall. China’s official news agency Xinhua summed up the government response in its headline: “China urges US to stop accusations on so-called Internet freedom.”

Why “so-called”? Because the Chinese Internet is open. Wide open.

“China urged the United States to respect facts and stop unreasonable accusations on China in the name of so-called Internet freedom,” said the article. It then quoted a Foreign Ministry spokesperson as saying, “The US side had criticized China’s policies on Internet administration, alluding that China restricts Internet freedom. We firmly oppose such words and deeds, which were against the facts and would harm the China-US relations.”

It’s constitutional. The Chinese constitution protects freedom of speech, he added—which it does, along with freedom of the press, of association, of religion, of demonstration, and freedom to criticize the government. The constitution also notes that “work is the glorious duty of every able-bodied citizen.”

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/china-to-us-stop-accusations-on-so-called-internet-freedom.ars