China’s Great Firewall isn’t a barrier to trade – it’s only a bulwark against Western propaganda, a Chinese state-run newspaper wants to remind citizens.
The Global Times came to the defence of the country’s Internet censors on Monday as they face renewed criticism from the United States. “History will positively assess the key role of the (Great Firewall) system,” said the paper in an editorial that ran in both Chinese and English.
The US Trade Representative warned last week in an annual trade report that China’s Internet crackdown is worsening and that it is a growing trade obstacle. Eight of the top 25 highest-traffic global websites are now blocked in China, and “much of the blocking appears arbitrary,” the US report said.
China also blocked the websites of Time and The Economist this month after both magazines ran cover articles that compared President Xi Jinping’s governing style to Mao Zedong’s cult of personality.
As one of China’s most strident state-run publications, the Global Times is often on the front lines of defence against foreign criticism. The Global Times argued in its editorial on Monday that the Great Firewall is necessary to keep out “harmful or unsafe information” and to fend off “Western intentions to penetrate China ideologically.”
It’s a familiar tack. When China is faced with questions of censorship, it tends to argue that it needs to defend itself against Western soft power and propaganda. Chinese officials have used similar lines of argument in their promotion of the idea of Chinese “Internet sovereignty” and in the government’s crackdown on foreign TV shows.
China’s concern over US soft power even extended to the new Disney children’s movie “Zootopia.”
Read the full article here
OTHER WSJ.COM STORIES:
– Disney’s Animated Film ‘Zootopia’ is a U.S. Propaganda Tool, Chinese Professor Says
