Asia Times reports on efforts by European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes and others to get Internet censorship by the Chinese government designated as a trade barrier by the WTO:
Speaking at the tail-end of a five-day trip to China on May 17, Kroes linked the matter to achieving a competitive environment for European companies and raised the censorship issue in a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang in Beijing.
“It is one of those issues that needs to be tackled within the WTO,” she told reporters in Shanghai. “I am pushing wherever I can just to get European enterprises on a level playing field in China and the other way around.”
She is not alone. Her remarks over the Chinese government’s strict monitoring of Internet content within the country – in which information deemed sensitive by the ruling Communist Party is blocked – is evidence that the European Union wants to join the United States’ push on Internet freedom and likens the issue to free trade. United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in March that the administration of President Barack Obama was weighing the merits of taking China’s censorship of Google to the WTO as an unfair barrier to trade.
