Snowden’s Chinese Fans

[struggle4progress]

2. US leaker Snowden both boon and burden for China

13 June 2013
Last updated at 11:50 ET
Damian Grammaticas

... US President Barack Obama was sitting down to tell Chinese leader Xi Jinping that US patience had run out and China had to rein in its cyber-spies, just as Edward Snowden's claims that America 's National Security Agency had been collecting vast amounts of information about internet users around the world were gaining attention ...

The China Daily on Thursday said "the massive US global surveillance programme... is certain to stain Washington's overseas image and test developing Sino-US ties".

It quoted Li Haidong, a researcher at the China Foreign Affairs University, who said that "for months Washington has been accusing China of cyber-espionage, but it turns out that the biggest threat to the pursuit of individual freedom and privacy in the US is the unbridled power of the government" ...

In an editorial, Hong Kong's independent Apple Daily wrote that "no matter how China's cyber-50 Cent Party praises Snowden for betraying the Central Intelligence Agency and how they drag the US down with mud-slinging tactics, it can neither change the fact that China is abusing cyber-monitoring to violate human rights and serve a one-party dictatorship, nor build up theoretical grounds for China to continue to abuse cyber-monitoring without any checks and balances whatsoever ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-22893958