Obama to China: Uncensored society is healthy

[babylonsister]

Obama to China: Uncensored society is healthy


By CHARLES HUTZLER, Associated Press Writer 1 min ago


BEIJING – President Barack Obama sat down with the Chinese leader Monday night, hours after he pointedly nudged his host country to stop censoring the Internet access, offering an animated defense of the tool that helped him win the White House — and suggested Beijing need not fear a little criticism.

The president's message during a town hall-style meeting with university students in Shanghai, China's commercial hub, focused on one of the trickiest issues separating China's communist government and the United States — human rights.

In a delicately balanced message, Obama couched his admonitions with words calling for cooperation, heavy with praise and American humility.

"I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable," Obama told students during his first-ever trip to China. "They can begin to think for themselves."

more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091116/ap_on_bi_ge/obama

[dgibby]

1. Glad to hear it.

Maybe this means he'll be repealing all those draconian laws about domestic spying. After all, censorship is the logical next step after surveillance.

[Clio the Leo]

2. I enjoyed the part where he said that, while it wasn't always easy to listen to his critics.....

..... he knew they were necessary in forcing him to make certain his decisions were the right ones.

My goodness that man knows how to spin it. There's a WHOLE lot of meaning in that sentence, more than meets the eye. It conceeds satisfaction to his critics while simultaneously robbing them of the power that their criticism gives them and it implies that the decisions he makes are done so after much deliberation and self-examination. Therefore, they must be the correct ones.

Brilliant.