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According to the China Internet Network Information Centre China now has the world’s largest online market. Add to that 277 million people with access to the internet through mobile phones.

China presents an incredible potential for reaching millions of folks for Jesus Christ. Even though the government tries to scrub the search engines of links to religious sites many fall through the cracks anyway. The numbers are too great for complete control.

Personally I am increasingly seeing more and more traffic from China on my websites.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared in a speech that unrestricted Internet access was a top priority of the Administration. In the process she took on China and a number of other countries around the world including Egypt for the recent cases of Internet censorship.

In her speech Secretary Clinton built stressed the importance of “Three Internet Freedoms”:

1. The right of all peoples to have access to an uncensored Internet.
2. The right of individuals to exercise free speech on the Internet
3. The right of businesses and other organizations to have access to uncensored information on the Internet in order to compete fairly.

Response: Wow, this is way more understanding and wisdom than I would have ever expected from Washington. Especially since some rumors had the Obama Administration looking for way to take control of the Internet using security as an excuse.            *Top

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Google email accounts were presumably hacked by the Chinese government in December. Since the victims were primarily Chinese human rights activists this resulted in a strain between Google and the Chinese government.

Now Google is saying that they may quit China over censorship of search results.

For once Google is on our side. China is known to have a wall of censorship in place limiting search results and access to Christian sites around the world.

It is said that nearly 340 million Chinese use the Internet so the implications are huge. The government’s penchant for control is well known and Yahoo along with Google have been criticized in the past for going along with some of the Chinese regulations and requests.            *Top