China needs freedom for whatever reasons

My friend Jean, who lives in China, left a comment on my blog.

That is exciting news because my blog, together with tons of other bloggers' in Blogspot, had been blocked by Chinese government for almost a year, the longest period that the Chinese government has blocked connection from the Western world via the Internet.

Beginning April 1, the English versions of Wikipedia, YouTube and Blogspot, have been made accessible to people in China again, although thousands of websites including the vast majority of foreign-based news sites in Chinese are still blocked.

This could be attributed to at least two reasons:

First and the most likely reason -- the Olympics. The Chinese government has been counting down to the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympic on August 8 to demonstrate to the world that China is no longer a locked-up recluse but a dynamic, confident giant. Since human rights in China has been a most criticized topic for a long time, China might want to establish a new image in media, by allowing the access to several controversial Web sites.

Secondly, the Tibet issue. Ever since the very beginning of reporting on it, western media have been predictably stood against "Communist China" in the rift between the Dalai lama, the people in Tibet and the Chinese government. No matter whether the media are automatically inclined to align with the Tibetans, it is not realistic to believe every single report negative to China can be correct. Several news pictures about Tibet protests being pushed by police in Nepal that happened earlier were mistakenly blamed on the Chinese police. This ironic mistake is being used widely by Chinese official reporting to accuse "biased western media" of often "fabricating news". This led to a national questioning attitude on the objectivity of western reporting among China. Chinese government then found they could be ironically benefited from the "biased reporting" from the western media.

In whatever reasons, this is a big step forward in Internet freedom in China. I am more than 7,000 miles from home. It was good to be able to hear from my friend Jean on my blog. The only thing that I can do now is cross my fingers and hope it won't be blocked again.