Will social media inside China help drive Chinese liberalization?

[Freely]

Social media will drive Chinese liberalization : Google's Schmidt

By Paul Sandle | Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - The rise of social media in China will lead to liberalization, and as more and more people go online China's government will be powerless to halt the changes, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google Inc, said on Monday.

Speaking at a conference in London, Schmidt recalled a meeting with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang this month, just weeks after China passed tough regulations on social media. Under new laws, people face harsh penalties if libellous "online rumors" they create are reposted more than 500 times.

"The most interesting thing about talking to the government, from the president all the way to the governors, is that they are obsessed with the Internet, which is why they passed these laws," Schmidt told the conference, which was organized by independent policy institution Chatham House.

He did not elaborate on their conversations.

Google in 2010 moved its Chinese search engine service out of China, the world's No. 2 economy -- citing rampant censorship -- and now operates it from Hong Kong.

But the growing popularity of services like Weibo -- a microblogging service that is China's version of Twitter -- and instant messaging site WeChat will make censorship increasingly difficult, Schmidt said.

"You simply cannot imprison enough Chinese people when they all agree to something," he said. "You won't be able to stop it even if you don't like it, and it will cause a liberalization."
@ Bubby, Quite agree.

Eric Schmidt of Google is using the yardstick of the free liberal west in measuring human rights and freedom and has underestimated the nasty cruelty of the CCP.

I came across a news about the increasing tightening grip of social media effected since Xi Jinping took office.

Sina weibo, an equivalent of twitter, has hired couple hundreds censorship staff doing similar jobs as eiji and coolwid on YA browsing posts around the clock and make sure that criticisms and anti CCP posts are deleted within 24 hours. Out of a total of 80,000 posts recorded in a 3 months period, some 600 posts got deleted.

Right on, all CCP needs to do is keep hiring tons of idiiots like eiji and coolwid doing nothing but read internet posts 24/7/365.
@ kv, Welcome back to YA with this account/name, nice to read some not so CCP-selling stuffs from you, finally.

Hard and pushy CCP sales-persons like DL, eiji/coolwid/han are having adverse effects on the corrupted regime. May be I should give them a crush course on becoming a real convincing salesperson.

[Bubby]

Social media in China will not help drive Chinese liberalization. The Chinese government will not accept change or give up control of its people. You may get a few educated Chinese to go along with it but the majority of the population are poor and uneducated farmers who can care less about liberalization - they want very little in life and don't want to challenge their government. This is a government of dictatorship on a grand scale. Have you forgotten what happened in Tiananmen Square in '89. The government retaliated with brute force even after the protest and they will again use violence. How can a few educated people stand a chance against a government that controls everything. It would be a disaster. The government knows that if anything change it will snowball into democracy.

[kv96ic28]

Ha Ha Ha... The west does not influence China as much as they think. I attribute it to ego, and ignorance. China has an inertia measured in centuries. China will continue as it sees fit.

This article is bogus.
"Google in 2010 moved its Chinese search engine service out of China..." Then why can I access it, as I am inside of China? If China did not us to access it, it would block it.

When viewing news, look at where it originates. I am extremely skeptical of the validity of the content in this article.

[postal p]

The government will not allow it.