From World Press Freedom Committee’s Interesting Times:
In China, and just about anywhere else, the Internet can be a two-edged sword.
Governments can find it to be a handy propaganda tool that can influence millions of users as long as only friendly voices can be heard.
And civil society forces have discovered that the Internet has opened infinite possibilities to overcome ages-old censorship.
China is perhaps the best example of this contradiction, as Chinese dissident-in-exile Xiao Qiang (above) today told a Washington audience during a forum organized by the US National Endowment for Democracy.
Xiao —currently a professor of journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley— reminded the audience that China has become an Internet behemoth, with more users than the US and a 1.3-billion population with access to 573 million cell phones.
