The following photo is from the official site of the State Council Information Office – the central government agency which is responsible for “managing content on the Internet.”
CDT translated the original caption:
In the afternoon of September 25, 2008, Cai Mingzhao, the Deputy Director of the State Council Information Office met Mr. Jimmy Wales, the Founder of Wikipedia, in his office.
Mr. Liu Zhengrong from Bureau No. 5 was also present at the meeting.
(Note: the Bureau No. 5 is “Bureau of Internet News” of the State Council Information Office)
Rebecca Mackinnon, an Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong‘s Journalism and Media Studies Centre, just posted the full text of her conversation with Jimmy Wales about more details of the meeting.
MacKinnon: Did you raise any concerns about the fact that, while the English and Chinese sites as a whole are unblocked, individual pages (for instance, pages about Falun Gong or the Tiananmen Crackdown) continue to be blocked?
Wales: Actually, in English, I was able to access those pages and similar ones. I am unsure about the exact current situation with respect to what pages are being filtered. Since I wasn’t sure of the exact details, and just due to the way the conversation went (more high level than about specific details), I didn’t raise this question.
MacKinnon: Did you say that you want those pages to be unblocked? Or are you cool with the fact that a few politically sensitive pages are blocked as long as most of Wikipedia is unblocked?
Wales: We didn’t discuss it. But, I am not cool with any censorship of Wikipedia. However, I do think it is much better for a few politically sensitive pages to be blocked than for everything to be blocked. And we will never cooperate with any blocking or censorship of neutral encyclopedic content.
For the full text and Rebecca Mackinnon’s analysis, please visit her blog.
