U.S.-China meeting next month to include Internet freedom talk

American officials are likely to broach the subject of Internet freedom
when they join their Chinese counterparts for a scheduled human-rights
meeting in Washington next month.

Those discussions, the first round of bilateral dialogue between the
United States and China since May 2008, arrive as both federal
lawmakers and U.S. companies scrutinize Beijing’s strict
Web-censorship rules and threaten possible penalties.

During a press briefing last Thursday, State
Department spokesman P.J. Crowley announced Internet freedom could be
among the issues discussed.

“I
mean, I’m sure that the broader topic of Internet freedom and the
availability of information to Chinese citizens, you know, we — we
disagree with China as to what that represents,” Crowley said. “I would
expect that to come up, yes.”

Those talks arrive one month after a flap between Google and China over a December cyberattack prompted company executives to cease censoring search results, in contravention of Chinese law. A separate debate over the country’s domain-name registration rules later pushed GoDaddy, the world’s biggest domain provider, to cease registering new domain names in China this year.

Both high-profile disputes arrive despite the State Department’s new push for worldwide Web freedoms. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton first outlined that goal in a speech last year that has since resonated in foreign policy and tech circles.

At the same time, congressional lawmakers are preparing their own efforts to handle Web companies that adhere to free expression rules domestically yet follow other states’ restrictions as a condition of doing business there.

But it remains unclear whether top diplomats will push China as much as some interest groups and federal lawmakers would prefer. For one thing, relations between Beijing and Washington have chilled dramatically in recent months, stemming from a host of disputes — from the Google fight to a spat between the two countries over Taiwan.