Andrew Leonard: The WikiLeaks China-Google Connection
[Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon.]
...According to the New York Times, one as-yet-unreleased-to-the-public cable from the American embassy in Beijing cites "a Chinese contact" as the source of an assertion that "China's Politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems in that country" -- an incident that the search engine giant blamed for its decision to withdraw from China....
The sourcing is thin, but after my own recent visit to China, I can't say the idea is inconceivable. Upon reading the news I was immediately reminded of something that a senior Chinese academic at a respected Shanghai think tank said to my visiting group of American journalists after we asked him why China was so dedicated to censoring the Internet. After a boilerplate preamble that rambled on and on without answering the question, the professor suddenly delivered a startling conclusion:
"The last time anyone could say anything they wanted in China was the Cultural Revolution. And no one who lived through that wants to live through it again."...
Read entire article at Salon
...According to the New York Times, one as-yet-unreleased-to-the-public cable from the American embassy in Beijing cites "a Chinese contact" as the source of an assertion that "China's Politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems in that country" -- an incident that the search engine giant blamed for its decision to withdraw from China....
The sourcing is thin, but after my own recent visit to China, I can't say the idea is inconceivable. Upon reading the news I was immediately reminded of something that a senior Chinese academic at a respected Shanghai think tank said to my visiting group of American journalists after we asked him why China was so dedicated to censoring the Internet. After a boilerplate preamble that rambled on and on without answering the question, the professor suddenly delivered a startling conclusion:
"The last time anyone could say anything they wanted in China was the Cultural Revolution. And no one who lived through that wants to live through it again."...