The Chinese Communist Party has built an Internet firewall that prevents hundreds of millions of Chinese Internet users from freely browsing overseas websites, and scholars within the system are calling for change. In a recent speech, Chinese economist Chen Wenling called for allowing the flow of data instead of having websites that can’t be opened.
Chen Wenling, the chief economist of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges (CCEI), called for allowing multiple forms of expression and “open data flow” in order to build a so-called “ideological powerhouse,” as scientists, experts and others need instant access to data flows around the world at a symposium on December 5 in Beijing.
Wenling Chen said that once she was interviewed by a TV station in Pakistan and asked for a link. They provided it immediately, but she couldn’t open it.
She said that even the website of the Chinese Communist Party’s old friend, the Pakistan Railways, “can’t be opened” in China, “How can we talk to the world if iron can’t be opened, copper can’t be opened, all kinds of things can’t be opened?
Chen also said that think tank scholars should be allowed to go out more to exchange dialogues and do in-depth work. She criticized the official limit on the number of days scholars can visit abroad as too urgent, and that violators are subject to disciplinary action.
Analysts say that as an institutional scholar, Chen Wenling’s statement highlights the CCP’s control and fear of the flow of public opinion and information.
On November 10, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a speech at the Ronald Reagan Institute entitled “The American Promise. He pointed out that the Trump administration has successfully shifted its policy toward the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and said that he wants to help the Chinese people knock down the CCP’s Internet firewall.
Mr. Pompeo said that the Trump administration has mobilized all sectors and used all tools to address the CCP’s challenges. He also said the United States needs to help the Chinese people gain access to free information and knock down the Internet firewall.
Ultimately, the Chinese people will determine the course of their country’s history,” Pompeo said. Our basic job is to make sure that the Chinese people have access to information and data, everything they need to know, so that they can share in the freedoms that we hold so dear. We’re going to have the ability for them to knock down this cyber firewall that’s imprisoning China, and that’s going to allow the Chinese people to make a completely different decision than the path that their leaders are taking them down now.”
He predicted that China will eventually end one-party rule and that “ultimately the Chinese people, like the people of the Soviet Union, will ultimately determine the course of this country’s history.”
On September 28, U.S. Undersecretary of State Raymond Klatsch tweeted a video of him standing next to a statue of former U.S. Embassy President Ronald Reagan, quoting Reagan’s 1987 call for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the wall in West Berlin.
More than 30 years ago, President Reagan said, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, please tear down this wall,'” Klatsch said. Today the Berlin Wall is gone, but a new digital wall has appeared, and that is, the Chinese firewall.”
“The Chinese firewall separates the Chinese people from the free world, just as the Berlin Wall separates the Germans from each other.The Berlin Wall was torn down more than 30 years ago. So I’m here to say, to borrow the words of President Reagan, Mr. Xi (Xi Jinping), please knock down the Chinese firewall,” Klatsch said.
A netizen followed up with a post saying, “tear down China’s Great Firewall.
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