Increased Information Freedom in China

Greetings from China. I am writing this post from China where I am traveling with a group of global executives in the context of a corporate training program. I had not been in China for a year and a half and I must say that I can feel the effect of social media in the internet on the country’s information policies.

One of the classic discussions on the web has been the censorship of Google by the Chinese government http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70081  The censorship basically was a reflection of the policy of restricted information by the government to its citizens; not letting Google index some sources of news was a good way to prevent users from finding them. Things have changed dramatically in a very short time, and I believe it is due to the ability of the Chinese citizens to connect to a myriad of social networks and interact outside the formal control of the government. If the citizens can send information to the world via social nets and get informed through them as well, it does not make much sense to drastically block information, if you do not block it, you may as well report it, as this gives you an opportunity to provide your own version of the story. The included picture is the front page of the China Daily newspaper reporting on the current situation in Xinjiang that forced the country’s president to return to China. Publishing this news was an almost unthinkable event just a few years ago.

Another obvious indication that the situation is changing is that I am writing this post from China (maybe they will detain me in the airport, guess that this happened if I do not block any more!) . All these changes are nothing but excellent news. There is still a way to go for this country as the freedom of the press is concerned, as evidenced by comparing the actual content of the different news sources from the outside that can be read here and those reported by Chinese media. In any case, the progress evidenced by not blocking news items from outside sources is crucial and it is the best step in the right direction