克林顿：中国互联网是新的“铁幕”

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以下原文转载自美国《时代》杂志中文版（博主及志愿者翻译）

By EDWARD WONG
Published: January 22, 2010
徐繁/译

北京讯 中国外交部于周五抨击了美国国务卿克林顿对于中国互联网审查的公开评论，并要求美国政府“尊重事实，停止就所谓的互联网自由问题进行毫无根据的指控”。

外交部网站周五发布了新闻发言人马朝旭的书面声明，其中提到克林顿周四所做的负面言论“将损害中美关系”。

“中国的网络是开放的。”他说。

外交部的声明，连同民权主义爱国报纸《环球时报》英文版的尖刻评论，充分表明中美已展开就互联网审查问题的辩论，更标志着中方做好了在政治上与美方互掐的准备。

奥巴马总统去年承诺将缓解对华关系，将RQ问题暂搁一边。然而近日美方针对中国互联网审查的批评，人民币汇率问题和对台销售武器等使双方摩擦升温，未来数月敌意或将爆发。

就互联网审查问题，克林顿把信息幕比作铁幕政策，点名批评了包括中国在内的多个国家，这番暗藏冷战意味的言论造成了极大的影响。这篇演说标志着美国行政高官首次把互联网自由列入外交政策中。

这场针对互联网审查的辩论的导火线源自上周谷歌宣布或将关闭其中文搜索引擎“Google.cn”，并缩减中国大陆的其他业务，如果中国高层不收回对审查搜索结果的要求。

到目前为止，中国当局一直试图把谷歌问题描绘成商业纠纷，或许是担心该争端被开明人士和在华外企演变为一场互联网审查的全民公投。外交部副部长何亚非周四表示，不应“过多解读该事件”，也不应将其与两国关系联系起来，据新华社报道。

但中国的态度可能会因克林顿的讲话而扭转。克林顿明确指出，“一种新型的信息幕政策正在全世界蔓延”，并指明包括中国在内的多个国家加强了互联网审查。（自2008年末，中国当局以扫黄运动为借口关闭了上千个网站。）她还赞扬以谷歌为例的美国企业“在商业决策中考虑了更多互联网和信息自由的因素”。

美国国务院邀请了至少两位著名中国博客作家前往华盛顿聆听克林顿的演讲，美国驻华使馆周五邀请了多位博客作家（其中大多是自由人士）参加一个关于互联网问题的碰头活动。

白宫发言人比尔伯顿周五表示，“我们在等待中国的回应”。

《环球时报》英文版的社论称克林顿“促使华盛顿与北京就互联网自由问题的摩擦升温”。

该报纸称，美方要求网络不受限制是一种“信息帝国主义”的表现，因为就信息流而言，发展中国家跟西方还存在差距。

“寻求不受限制的互联网，不经审查的自由信息流这种做法，只是美国以民主之义，将其价值观强加于他国的一种变相企图。”该报纸表示，“美国政府强加意识形态的企图是不可接受的，因此，我们不会允许美国达到目的。”

环球时报中文版网页上的文章声称美国是在利用互联网作武器以实现全球霸权。

尚存的一大问题在于，中国的老百姓是否在大体上接受当局的理论依据。尽管在大多数情况下，城市的中产阶级都支持当局的主权问题，如西藏问题和台湾问题，但他们也开始揶揄媒体审查制度了。这种情绪在网民身上得到了很好的体现。中国拥有全世界最多的网民，据官方数据有 3.84亿人，同时中国拥有最复杂的网络审查制度，绰号“大防火墙”。

除去自七月暴乱后刚刚恢复网络的西部新疆地区，因为互联网控制而恼怒的中国网民们，聪明地开始使用翻墙软件了。

Jonathan Ansfield和 Xiyun Yang对本文亦有贡献。

China Rebuffs Clinton on Internet Warning

By EDWARD WONG
Published: January 22, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/world/asia/23diplo.html

BEIJING — The Chinese Foreign Ministry lashed out Friday against criticism of China in a speech on Internet censorship made by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, calling on the United States government “to respect the truth and to stop using the so-called Internet freedom question to level baseless accusations.”

Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a written statement posted Friday afternoon on the ministry’s Web site that the criticism leveled by Mrs. Clinton on Thursday was “harmful to Sino-American relations.”

“The Chinese Internet is open,” he said.

The statement by the Foreign Ministry, along with a scathing editorial in the English-language edition of The Global Times, a populist, patriotic newspaper, signaled that China was ready to wrestle politically with the United States in the debate over Internet censorship.

President Obama promised last year to start a more conciliatory era in United States-China relations, pushing human rights issues to the background, but the new criticism of China’s Internet censorship and rising tensions over currency valuation and Taiwan arms sales indicate that animus could flare in the months ahead.

Mrs. Clinton’s sweeping speech with its cold war undertones — likening the information curtain to the Iron Curtain — criticized several countries by name, including China, for Internet censorship. It was the first speech in which a top administration official offered a vision for making Internet freedom an integral part of foreign policy.

The debate over Internet censorship was brought to the fore in China last week when Google announced it might shut down its Chinese-language search engine, Google.cn, and curtail its other operations in mainland China if Chinese officials did not back down from requiring Google to censor search results.

Until now, the Chinese government had been trying to frame the dispute with Google as a commercial matter, perhaps because officials want to avoid having the dispute become a referendum on Internet censorship policies among Chinese liberals and foreign companies operating in China. On Thursday, He Yafei, a vice foreign minister, had said the Google dispute should not be “over-interpreted” or linked to the bilateral relationship with the United States, according to Xinhua, the official state news agency.

But in the aftermath of Mrs. Clinton’s speech, that attitude could be changing. Mrs. Clinton pointedly said that “a new information curtain is descending across much of the world” and identified China as one of a handful of countries that had stepped up Internet censorship in the past year. (Starting in late 2008, the Chinese government shut down thousands of Web sites under the pretext of an antipornography campaign.) She also praised American companies such as Google that are “making the issue of Internet and information freedom a greater consideration in their business decisions.”

The State Department had invited at least two prominent Chinese bloggers to travel to Washington for Mrs. Clinton’s speech, and on Friday the United States Embassy here invited bloggers, mostly liberals, to attend a briefing on Internet issues.

A White House spokesman, Bill Burton, said Friday that “all we are looking for from China are some answers.”

In its editorial, the English-language edition of The Global Times said Mrs. Clinton “had raised the stakes in Washington’s clash with Beijing over Internet freedom.”

The American demand for an unfettered Internet was a form of “information imperialism,” the newspaper said, because less developed nations cannot possibly compete with Western countries in the arena of information flow.

“The U.S. campaign for uncensored and free flow of information on an unrestricted Internet is a disguised attempt to impose its values on other cultures in the name of democracy,” the newspaper said, adding that the “U.S. government’s ideological imposition is unacceptable and, for that reason, will not be allowed to succeed.”

Articles on the Chinese-language Web site of The Global Times asserted that the United States employs the Internet as a weapon to achieve worldwide hegemony.

One big question is whether ordinary Chinese will, to any large degree, accept China’s arguments justifying Internet censorship. Although urban, middle-class Chinese often support government policies on sovereignty issues such as Tibet or Taiwan, they generally deride media censorship. That feeling is especially pronounced among those who call themselves netizens. China has the most Internet users of any country, some 384 million by official count, but also the most complex system of Internet censorship, nicknamed the Great Firewall.

Except in the western region of Xinjiang, which is only starting to restore Internet access after cutting service off entirely after ethnic riots in July, canny netizens across China use software to get over the Great Firewall while chafing at the controls.

Jonathan Ansfield and Xiyun Yang contributed reporting.