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The advantage of the internet is that it has taken away the charade of politics. China has heard of democracy and people know about certain concepts they wouldn't have previously.

It seems pretty clear that the Internet has an important economic role to play for China as it reaches out to the rest of the world.

There are a lot of people that think the Internet is going to bring information and democracy and pluralism in China just by existing.

So rather than face the bitter truth, China has placed severe restrictions on the Internet and enlisted America's high-tech companies as their Internet police.

China is building a model for how an authoritarian government can survive the Internet.

There's a real contradiction that's difficult to explain to the West and the outside world about China and about the Internet.

This is the real tragedy of America's 'Internet freedom agenda': It's going to be the dissidents in China and Iran who will pay for the hypocrisy that drove it from the very beginning.

Experience has shown us that attempts to control the Internet will invariably fail. We should be instructed by the failed efforts of China to regulate political content, the efforts of America to regulate Internet gambling, or the efforts of Australia to regulate certain speech. By its very nature, the Internet will always resist such controls.

The Chinese government learnt how to manage the Internet from Western developed countries; we have not learnt enough yet.

The Internet is truly God's gift to the Chinese people.