“The (Blogging) People” – NYTimes.com

Worth reading Thomas Friedman’s account of the China blogosphere–what a powerful and expansive mode of communicating at all levels. Much depends on leaders understanding the value of communicating with this wider population.

“China for the first time has a public sphere to discuss everything affecting Chinese citizens,” explained Hu Yong, a blogosphere expert at Peking University. “Under traditional media, only elite people had a voice, but the Internet changed that.” He added, “We now have a transnational media. It is the whole society talking, so people from various regions of China can discuss now when something happens in a remote village — and the news spreads everywhere.” But this Internet world “is more populist and nationalistic,” he continued. “Many years of education that our enemies are trying to keep us down has produced a whole generation of young people whose thinking is like this, and they now have a whole Internet to express it.”

via Op-Ed Columnist – Power to the (Blogging) People – NYTimes.com.