BEIJING—China stepped up its verbal feud with the U.S. over the
Internet, with a commentator in the Communist Party’s main newspaper
saying America is seeking to control the Internet and alleging that the
U.S. used the Web to incite election protests in Iran last year.
“I’m afraid that in the eyes of American politicians, only when
information is controlled by the U.S. does it count as free
information,” said the article in the People’s Daily newspaper Sunday.
The article was one of a series of Chinese statements aimed at
rebutting remarks by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a
speech on Internet freedom, and allegations by Google Inc. that sophisticated cyber attacks targeting it and many other U.S. companies had originated in China.
Mrs. Clinton said in a speech Thursday the U.S. is making free
access to the Internet a foreign-policy priority, and criticized China,
among other countries, for censorship of Web content. She also called
on China’s government to address Google’s allegations.
The brief People’s Daily article, which carried the byline Wang
Xiaoyang, charged that the U.S. developed the concept of cyber warfare
and that it had used the Internet to foment unrest in Iran. “It was
America…
