Chinese Ask Kerry to Help Tear Down a Firewall

[alp227]

Source: New York Times

BEIJING —A group of Chinese bloggers asked the United States to take up the cause of Internet freedom in an unusual meeting on Saturday with Secretary of State John Kerry.

One by one, the bloggers voiced concerns to Mr. Kerry, who arrived here on Friday to discuss regional issues with China’s leaders, that the ability of Chinese citizens to gain access to information was under siege and that the country’s prospects for becoming a democracy were uncertain at best.

“Will you get together with the Chinese who aspire for freedom” and help “tear down this great firewall that blocks the Internet?” asked Zhang Jialong, a reporter for Tencent Finance, which reports on financial issues.

Mr. Zhang, who was detained for three days in 2011 because of his posts about conflicts between the artist Ai Weiwei and the Chinese authorities, asked Mr. Kerry to look into reports that American companies had helped the Chinese government establish controls over what websites Chinese citizens could access.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/world/asia/chinese-ask-kerry-to-help-tear-down-a-firewall.html

[loudsue]

1. This should be interesting.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Set an example by supporting Internet Neutrality.

A gigabyte is a gigabyte.

Killing internet neutrality is big business's way to squeeze the small business owner and to censor (block, disallow, forbid) traffic that they don't like, for whatever reason political, religious, or moralistic, or no reason.

[Earth_First]

3. Ding! nt

[Nanjing to Seoul]

4. Not going to happen. The ISPs of China, the content providers of China

and the authorities in charged are all part of the same, Red and Yellow, nationwide stroking job in the same bed.

Tencent, Weibo, Sinablog, 168, Baidu, Ren Ren Wang. . .all the same. Never going to happen, mainly because the CCP still follows the Deng Xiaoping idea of "with every breath of fresh air, a few flies enter the room."

[kimbutgar]

5. Ironic by the time they get Internet freedom in china we will be losing it in the US

Based on the track we are wiith further media consolidation and the recent ruling regarding Verizon.