Wen Jiabao 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.

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.

The Internet is uncontrollable. And if the Internet is uncontrollable, freedom will win. It’s as simple as that

The Internet in China is fully open and the Chinese Government manages the Internet according to the law. As for what you can and cannot watch, watch what you can watch, and don’t watch what you cannot watch.

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.

Google has withdrawn from China, arguing that it is no longer willing to design its search engine to block information that the Chinese government does not wish its citizens to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.

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.

Both the American people and nations that censor the internet should understand that our government is committed to helping promote internet freedom.

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.

I don't care how sacred is freedom, but I think the time has come for governments, at least the Malaysian government, to censor the Internet.

So rather than face the bitter truth, China has placed severe restrictions on the Internet and enlisted America's high-tech companies as their Internet police.

The Internet has been seen in the West as the quintessential expression of the free exchange of ideas and information, untrammeled by government interference and increasingly global in reach. But the Chinese government has shown that the Internet can be successfully filtered and controlled.

History is rife with examples of governments taking actions to 'protect' their citizens from harm by controlling access to information and inhibiting freedom of expression and other freedoms outlined in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We must make sure, collectively, that the Internet avoids a similar fate.

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.

We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.

China is building a model for how an authoritarian government can survive the Internet.

We've seen a massive attack on the freedom of the web. Governments are realizing the power of this medium to organize people and they are trying to clamp down across the world, not just in places like China and North Korea; we're seeing bills in the United States, in Italy, all across the world.

The user in China wants the same thing that any Internet user wants - privacy in conversations, maximum access to information, and the ability to speak their minds online.

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

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.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo should be developing new technologies to bypass government sensors and barriers to the Internet; but instead, they agreed to guard the gates themselves.

The Internet's distinct configuration may have made cyberattacks easy to launch, but it has also kindled the flame of freedom.

In Russia, they do not generally block the Internet and directly censor websites.

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.