From Christian Science Monitor:
While China practices harsh media control at home, it has embarked on a major campaign abroad to present itself as a modernizing and open nation.
Its confrontation with Google and tightened control of the Internet, including recent attempts to block Facebook and Twitter, are testimony to the ruling regime’s fear that a free flow of information could undermine its autocratic communist foundation and lead to dreaded democracy.
At the same time, it is mobilizing extensive “soft power,” to convince neighboring countries in Asia, and the world at large, that it is an increasingly modern and powerful – but benign – nation that deserves respect but should engender no fear.
