Martin Jacques Quotes

Today, the Chinese government blocks websites and search results with the so called Great Firewall, an army of censors deletes articles and comments deemed politically sensitive, and legions of government-sponsored Internet users steer online sentiment in the government’s favor by posting pro-Communist Party and nationalist comments in discussion forums.

When U.S. commercial interests press the Chinese government to do a better job of policing Chinese websites for pirated content, a blind eye is generally turned to the fact that ensuing crackdowns provide a great excuse to tighten mechanisms to censor all content the Chinese government doesn't like.

Whether it's Baidu or Chinese versions of YouTube or Sina or Sohu, Chinese Internet sites are getting daily directives from the government telling them what kinds of content they cannot allow on their site and what they need to delete.

I think we should not control the Internet.

It is true that authoritarian governments increasingly see the Internet as a threat in part because they see the U.S. government behind the Internet.

The early idealists and companies and governments have all assumed that the Internet will bring freedom. Yet China proves that this is not the case.

Every year in China, Internet executives are officially rewarded for their 'patriotism.'

The Chinese government sometimes shuts down the Internet and mobile services in specific areas where unrest occurs.

Like it or not, Google and the Chinese government are stuck in a tense, long-term relationship, and can look forward to more high-stakes shadow-boxing in the netherworld of the world's most elaborate system of censorship.

China's Internet will continue to be policed and controlled, information filtered, sites prohibited, noncompliant search engines excluded, and sensitive search words disallowed. And where China goes, others, also informed by different values, are already and will follow.

To uphold state security China like many other countries of the world has placed some restrictions on the Internet to protect the freedom of the majority of the people.

Even a government as ostensibly open and committed to freedom of speech as our own — are [censors] more likely to operate in their own interests than in their citizens’. In the age of cyberspace, that is a scary prospect.

Political oppositionary activity on the Russian Internet caused the government to pass laws limiting both service operators and users. As a result, the Russian tech environment became much less liberal, losing freedom as one of its competitive advantages.

China didn't want to lose the cutting edge of technology. So the idea of having a Sina Weibo was an attempt to compete with Twitter. However, it has no soul - which is freedom of expression. Nevertheless, I think the government regrets having Sina Weibo, but they cannot shut it down. That would definitely be suicidal.

Twitter is growing up, expanding into other countries, and recognizing that the Internet is contrary to what people hoped; the government does reach into the Internet.

The war for the Internet has begun. Hollywood is in control of politics. The government is killing innovation.

It's much easier to force intermediary communications and Internet companies such as Google to police themselves and their users than the alternatives: sending cops after everybody who attempts a risque or politically sensitive search, getting parents and teachers to do their jobs, or chasing down the origin of every offending link.

Let me start with Yahoo. As we meet today, a Chinese citizen who had the courage to speak his mind on the Internet is in prison because Yahoo chose to share his name and address with the Chinese Government.

Google has withdrawn from China, arguing that it is no longer willing to design its search engine to block information that the Chinese government does not wish its citizens to have. In liberal democracies around the world, this decision has generally been greeted with enthusiasm.

There's a real contradiction that's difficult to explain to the West and the outside world about China and about the Internet.

If the U.N. were to be successful in its efforts to control the Internet, countries where human rights records range from questionable to criminal could be put in charge of determining what is and is not allowed to appear online.

Washington faces a simple choice: allow the Internet to remain as an engine of innovation, a platform for speech in even the harshest tyrannies, and a unified connection for people across the globe—or cede control of the Internet to service providers motivated by their parochial interests.

State intervention in the literary realm went far beyond the blue-penciling of texts. It extended to the shaping of literature itself as a force at work throughout the social order. If states wielded such power in the age of print, what will restrain them from abusing it in the age of the Internet?

At a certain point, a critical mass of people either have used the Internet or have expectations. Anything less than the free flow of information will be seen as having something taken away. We've seen time and again - in Egypt and Iran, for example - that creates a backlash.

The Chinese government learnt how to manage the Internet from Western developed countries; we have not learnt enough yet.