Internet specialist Rebecca MacKinnon from HKU talks about the uneasy relationship between international Internet companies and China’s government:

“I think you can engage in a smart manner. I think it’s really a matter of being honest and open and transparent with your users about what you’re doing with their data, what information they’re going to get and not going to get through your service, because this isn’t just an issue in China.
Frankly, globally, it’s very difficult to point to a single country where you don’t have governments on one side, users on the other, and companies in the middle being pushed by governments to do things that run counter, arguably, to the rights and interests of those users.
I mean, even in the United States recently we’ve had cases of telecom companies being pressured by the Bush Administration to reveal data without warrants, and so on and so on.
Now, I’m not saying that the United States is China, at all. But what I am saying is that we have a global problem that no country is immune to unless there is no Internet. So maybe North Korea doesn’t have this problem, but pretty much everybody else has this problem to some degree.
And what we need to do is make sure that we’re not having a race to the bottom. We need to make sure that the companies who are doing business in the most authoritarian countries are not setting the standards of business practice for Internet and telecommunications companies globally. And that is a danger with what’s going on in China.”

An entire episode of NPR’s On The Media from China.

“From WNYC in New York, this is NPR’s On The Media. I’m Brook Gladstone, reporting this week from China. We’re lingering near a restuarant window in Beijing — OTM producers Jamie York, Megan Ryan, and I — listening to the sweet sound of music pouring out into an alley. Caught eavesdropping, we’re waved in to watch a rehearsal of China’s Olympic theme song, “We Are Ready” …

On The Media’s China blog leaves mainland China on an optimistic note:

“We’ve done about 25 big interviews on this trip and one thing they’ve all had in common is optimism. We’ve waited, day after day after day, for someone to tell us about the bad, the really bad, parts of doing journalism in China. That day never came…

“By all accounts China is more open, and Chinese people more free to express themselves then they were 10 years ago. That’s it. Things are in motion here. There’s a long and unknown road ahead but they are on it and don’t want to pull over for an interview about the past. That would only slow the traffic even more.”