Former US president Bill Clinton urged China yesterday to recognize the urgency of the environmental threats to its growth, and to use the Internet as a tool to surmount them. But he remained silent on the risks faced by those who use the Internet as a forum for dissent.
"You will have to come to grips with significant challenges to your growth," Clinton said at an Internet conference in this eastern resort city, warning that the energy consumption required to keep China's economy growing at its recent rate of more than 9 percent is "unsustainable."
Clinton, the keynote speaker at a conference hosted by Yahoo's new Chinese partner, Alibaba.com, did not respond to questions from reporters about demands by human rights activists that he raise the case of a jailed Chinese journalist with his hosts.
Just days earlier, overseas-based human rights groups disclosed that Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd had provided e-mail account information that helped lead to journalist Shi Tao's conviction and 10-year prison sentence on state secrecy charges.
Other Chinese journalists have faced similar charges of violating vague security laws as communist leaders struggle to maintain control of information in the burgeoning Internet era.
Despite government information sharing requirements and other restrictions, Yahoo and its major rivals have been expanding their presence in China in hopes of reaching more of the country's fast-growing population of Internet users who now number more than 100 million.
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‘TROUBLEMAKER’: Most countries believe that it is China — rather than Taiwan — that is undermining regional peace and stability with its coercive tactics, the president said China should restrain itself and refrain from being a troublemaker that sabotages peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday. Lai made the remarks after China Coast Guard vessels sailed into disputed waters off the Senkaku Islands — known as the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) in Taiwan — following a remark Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi made regarding Taiwan. Takaichi during a parliamentary session on Nov. 7 said that a “Taiwan contingency” involving a Chinese naval blockade could qualify as a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, and trigger Tokyo’s deployment of its military for defense. Asked about the escalating tensions
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