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Lin is also well known for her photography. In this interview, she speaks about the lack of development in the Chinese web 2.0 / Internet industry, Taiwan's uncensored Internet, the opportunity average Chinese people got to "taste the flavor of freedom in an unblocked Internet" during the Olympics, and digitally savvy Chinese netizens.

Apparently we missed that page of the international rule book. We do recall Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, though. That's the portion of the United Nations' seminal 1948 document that states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

If Chinese leaders are tired of all the international attention being given to Hu, there's a better solution than high dudgeon from the Foreign Ministry: They could set him free.

The result was a challenge to the prevalent thinking that the Internet in China is all about entertainment, and that Chinese users will stay complacent under Internet control and management, since greater freedom of expression was allowed right after the quake. But now it remains to be seen whether these changes will have a lasting impact on Internet use in China. With the state returning to its tight pre-quake controls over the Internet, users may resist giving up their recent freedoms.

新闻自由日，一个需要时刻被提醒的纪念日，因为，新闻自由是维系民主制度的重要基建。在新闻自由被解放前，人民无从获得全面资讯，更加无法去辨识社会存在的种种弊端。还记得在这一届大选前，与公正党的立慷出席了一场由学运主办的大选前的分享。那个时候，我们都深深赞成，突破媒体的封锁是民主向前跨进的重要元素。

如果以为仅仅依靠民主制度就可以保证新闻自由，那就大错特错了。即便是在实行民主的西方，在危机时期和很难一眼明断的过渡时期，比如目前的全球化阶段，要做到这一点也十分困难。因为，在这样一些时期，人们有必要和无必要的担心都在急剧增加，谎言和真实，宣传和信息从四面八方扑面而来，使人头晕目眩，不知如何是好。而对人们的这些恐惧和担心作出的政治回答，首先冲击的就是自由言论的权利和报道自由。这一点，在海湾战争，巴尔干冲突以及911恐怖袭击的后果中已经频频得到证实。

一步一脚印，民主向前进！^^

This lack of freedom stunts any real debate on the future of China. Thinking is still circumscribed. There are areas that are still taboo or where intellectuals can only hint at what they mean. In three vital spheres, this is deeply damaging to China’s national interest. The first is foreign policy. China has evolved in less than a generation into a world power, one now placed alongside America in a newly minted category of G2. But the country is uncertain how to exercise this power. And as long as the party restricts the debate to a known ideological framework, it cannot mobilise China’s vast intellectual capabilities to address this. The second area, intellectual property, is equally damaged. As long as there is no real freedom to question the foundations of society, China will not produce innovators. It will be able to copy and develop, but not to outstrip competitors and set the framework for the world. And the third area is the legitimate assertion of religious and regional identities alongside Chinese citizenship.

The Internet is not the same for everybody. Despite it's reputation as a borderless, global, connected, democratic network, access and content filtering based on national boarders has become the norm. The BBC, for example, filters content for copyright reasons to visitors accessing their website from outside of Great Britain. Much more serious, however, is the heavy political censorship happening in countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. China, being the most extreme example, strictly censors political content on the web through the blocking of IP addresses and dynamic content filtering. With the support of western technology companies such as Cisco, Yahoo, and Google, The Golden Shield Project (sometimes referred to as the the Great Fire Wall of China) censors the web for China's 1.3 billion inhabitants. The Internet police in China is estimated to contain over 30,000 workers, and is responsible for blocking content such as Tibetan independence, Taiwan independence, police brutality, the Tienanmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, democracy, religion, and some international news.

China prepared for the Olympics. Is the world prepared for China? Over 5 nights leading up to the opening ceremony, we revealed the controversial politics, history and culture of the world’s newest superpower and host of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. WATCH THE EPISODES HERE! Naked China: Busting Out Naked China: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Naked China: Out of Control Naked China: Fighting for FreedomNaked China: Let the Party Begin

Thirteen years ago in Beijing, you spoke eloquently about the duty of all governments to respect the fundamental human rights of women and men. Respect for human rights, you said, means “not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions.” In recent years, however, human rights concerns have been pushed progressively further to the margins of the U.S.-China relationship. The Chinese government’s growing financial, diplomatic, and military strength, coupled with its hostility to reforms that challenge the Chinese Communist Party’s grip on power, make China a difficult country in which to effect change. But the advancement of human rights in, and with, China is arguably more central to U.S. interests than ever before. Press censorship in China makes it possible for toxic food and public health crises to spread globally. Suppression of dissent removes internal checks against environmental damage that has global impact. Abuses of low-wage labor implicate international firms operating inside China and compromise goods that come into the United States. The government’s control of mass media and the internet allow it to stoke nationalist anger against the United States in moments of crisis. The export from China of internet-censoring technologies and its provision of unconditional aid to repressive regimes increases the United States' burdens in fighting censorship and human rights crises worldwide. As much as the Chinese government appears to resist outside pressure to improve its record, experience suggests that it does respond to such pressure.

今天，郭飞雄先生还在狱中，北京的盛大仪式就要开始。我想起了看热闹的观众，一个伤心的女人，战友，背叛了的精英贵族，还有国王。还有那个字，“freedom！”

They announced: "We have immediately asked relevant government departments to investigate those that started the rumour." Relevant government departments? But how enchanting to find Nike speaking like the foreign office of an independent republic, almost as if the sportswear firm has an extradition treaty with the Chinese government. It hasn't, of course, so the rather more salient question is whether Nike has any qualms about getting the famously gossamer-touched Chinese government to leave no stone unturned in the hunt for - and let's keep stressing it - an anonymous internet poster."We want to act to protect our brand reputation in the same way as any corporation would want to if people were posting or writing false accusations," the Nike spokesman Charlie Brooks told the Guardian yesterday. "This isn't about a debate on freedom of speech. It's simply helping us to identify the person who posted it."

THE MCCAIN NEGATIVE WORDCLOUDWords Not in McCain’s Tech Policy | blog |social network | collaboration | hyperlink | democracy | google | wikipedia | open access | open source | standards | gnu | linux | | BitTorrent | anonymity | facebook | wiki | free speech | games | comcast | media concentration | media | lolcats |

Even if we ignore the cultural, social, and democratic aspects of the Net, even if we consider the Net to be nothing but a way to move content to “consumers” (his word), McCain still gets it wrong. There’s nothing in his policy about encouraging the free flow of ideas. Instead, when McCain thinks about ideas, he thinks about how to increase the walls around them by cracking down on “pirates” and ensuring ” fair rewards to intellectual property” (which, technically speaking, I think isn’t even English). Ideas and culture are, to John McCain, business commodities. He totally misses the dramatic and startling success of the Web in generating new value via open access to ideas and cultural products. The two candidates’ visions of the Internet could not be clearer. We can have a national LAN designed first and foremost to benefit business, and delivered to passive consumers for whom the Net is a type of cable TV. Or, we can have an Internet that is of the people, by the people, for the people. Is it going to be our Internet or theirs?

“Senator McCain’s technology plan doesn’t put Americans first—it is a rehash of tax breaks and giveaways to the big corporations and their lobbyists who advise the McCain campaign. This plan won’t do enough for hardworking Americans who are still waiting for competitive and affordable broadband service at their homes and businesses. It won’t do enough to ensure a free and open Internet that guarantees freedom of speech. It won’t do anything to ensure that we use technology to bring transparency to government and free Washington from the grip of lobbyists and special interests. Senator McCain’s plan would continue George Bush’s neglect of this critical sector and relegate America’s communications infrastructure to second-class status. That’s not acceptable,” said William Kennard, Former Chairman, Federal Communications Commission.

As author Rebecca Fannin pointed out on the Huffington Post, even China was barely mentioned: "Why was China ignored in the panel discussions? First, it's far away. Second, and more importantly, Silicon Valley is in a state of denial."  She thinks that the Silicon Valley patrons of the Fortune Brainstorm are failing to take China seriously, and that this denial will cause them to be "blindsided" by a "truly disruptive force."

"The capitalists aren't really that helpful, generally," he said. It depends on the business model deployed which really depends on the social intentions of the people running the business, and how much they care about long-term social and political repercussions. "We're forgetting that we had to fight to create an open Internet." Venture capitalists, he said, "assume that the Internet just works... that's very irresponsible," and they're not thinking about how specific business decisions impact overall levels of freedom, openness, and inclusion. "We have to do more than just run around chasing deals."

In fact, this debate on the premier’s crying should not be a trivial matter. Its poignancy and enormous political implications have been closely related to Wen’s former mentor, Zhao Ziyang, the CCP general secretary who famously cried in Tiananmen Square, begging the protesters to leave the place that would soon become an intended killing field. If Zhao were not indecisive or did not cry in Tiananmen Square in 1989, or if he instead stood on top of a tank sympathetic to the pro-democracy forces—bravely commanding the tremendous force of the millions yearning for freedom, human rights, and for a change of the corrupt system, like Boris Yeltsin in the waning days of the Soviet Union—China may have already had a bold and visionary political leader and a brand new political reality. But in the final crucial moments that decided history, Moscow did not believe in tears, and Beijing did. A great historic opportunity was lost by Zhao for the complete lack of a strong and resolute visionary leader from within the power elite who alone could command the enormous political and military resources to change history. And now, as Zhao’s erstwhile protégé, Wen continues that legacy [7].

Modern Chinese nationalism often veers between Mr. Coubertin's and Mr. Maurras's ideas of nationhood. Officially, the government likes to talk about friendship between peoples, and harmony and peace, while at the same time promoting an injured sense of historical Chinese victimhood at the hands of foreign powers. When demonstrations of Chinese nationalism run out of control, with or without official encouragement, the feeling of national hurt can turn to violent aggression. It has been happening of late in the U.S., among other places, when Chinese students attacked Tibetans, or indeed anyone who "offended the feelings of the Chinese people."

This type of official patriotism is based on a peculiarly skewed view of history. Rather than celebrate the high points of Chinese civilization, the emphasis falls entirely on suffering at the hands of foreigners. The sense of victimhood runs so deep that it is impossible for most Chinese to view themselves as aggressors. The idea that Tibetans, for example, might have some reason to see themselves as victims of the Chinese, is absurd. More than that, many Chinese genuinely believe that this type of Tibetan "propaganda" has been deliberately taken up by the Western press to inflict yet another humiliation on the Chinese people.

This does not mean, however, that democracy would be an automatic cure. In the unlikely event that China were suddenly to have a peaceful transformation to a liberal democracy, nationalism would not go away. No party seen to be soft on foreign powers, especially Japan and the U.S., would be. Modern Chinese history has been so bloody that the scars will take a long time to heal. Ethnic nationalism can be a kind of poison, especially when it is based on a feeling of victimhood. Political freedom should help to soothe such feelings in the long run, but this will not happen in time for the Beijing Olympics.

Commerce has since 1997 repeatedly refused to incorporate freedom of expression as a principle guiding the ICANN regime, despite numerous calls for it to do so in public comment sessions. The earliest of these calls came in 1997, during the drafting of the Green Paper leading to ICANN's creation, when the principles guiding the regime were first being formulated. EFF, the Domain Name Rights Coalition and many individuals asked that free expression be written into ICANN's constitution. The most recent reiteration of this call came in 2006, from the Internet Governance Project during a review of ICANN’s status. In each case, Commerce has either ignored or in some cases explicitly rebuffed these calls for recognition of free speech as a part of ICANN’s mandate.

The government now faces a tricky predicament: Having loosened its restraints on information flow this time, a return to its old ways at the next sign of difficulty could backfire. “The government should learn a positive lesson: When it allows freer information flow it is better for its image and legitimacy,” Mr. Xiao said. “But this will not always be a case, especially if the next crisis is man-made

China’s online censors can be merciless in their deletion of blog postings or forum comments that are deemed “too sensitive,” particularly involving anything to do with the so-called “Three T’s”: Tiananmen, Tibet and Taiwan. Post-earthquake negativity, though, has been tolerated. “Nine billion yuan [$1.3 billion] has been raised but how much will actually get to the disaster zone?” one skeptical commenter asked on a forum on Baidu, China’s leading search engine. Discussions focusing on discrepancies between the amount of donations declared by the Chinese Red Cross and the corresponding numbers issued by the Ministry of Civil Affairs also have met with minimal interference, Mr. Kennedy said. However, the government has not turned a blind eye. More than a dozen people have been arrested for “spreading rumors” online, and political blogger Guo Quan was detained for questioning the risks posed by cracked dams and damaged nuclear facilities.

The number of Internet users in China hit 228.5 million in March -- for the first time surpassing the number of users in the United States, 217.1 million, according to the Beijing-based research firm BDA China.

- China will not guarantee it won't censor the Internet over this summer's Beijing Olympics, nor can it guarantee to stamp out piracy of Olympic-branded goods, officials said on Thursday.

"Every country limits access to some websites. Even in developed countries not every site can be accessed."