Obama pushes rights with students

Free Internet is source of strength, Chinese youth told

But President Obama did tiptoe into that controversial topic on Monday when he told students in Shanghai that a free and unfettered Internet is a source of strength, not weakness.

For Obama, who has been taking pains to strike a conciliatory note during his first visit to China, it was a rare challenge to Chinese authorities, but expressed in Obama’s now familiar nuance. Responding to a question that came via the Internet during a town hall meeting with Shanghai students — “Should we be able to use Twitter freely?” — Obama first started to answer in the slightly off-the-point manner which he often uses when he is gathering his thoughts.

“Well, first of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter,” he said. “My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone.” But then he appeared to gather confidence.  “I should be honest, as president of the US, there are times where I wish information didn’t flow so freely because then I wouldn’t have to listen to people criticising me all the time,” he said. But, he added, “because in the US, information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”

On a trip where he has gone out of his way to present a kinder and gentler image of America, the Twitter question, and Obama’s answer, stood out as a stark snapshot of a young American president’s efforts to reach China’s youth while not offending its authorities.
Interestingly, China’s government itself demonstrated some restraint, and allowed the Twitter question and Obama’s answer to stay up on websites hours after the town hall meeting.

The New York Times