http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2010/10/07/netizens-react-premiers-interview-censored/

October 7, 2010, 12:39 AM HKT

Netizens React: Premier’s Interview Censored

An official news blackout in China surrounding Premier Wen Jiabao’s interview over the weekend with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria hasn’t kept it from becoming one of the hottest topics on the Chinese Internet. If anything, censorship has only made it hotter—possibly giving Wen additional political clout in the process.

“The longer the newspapers refuse to report it, the more need there is for us to discuss it vigorously,” one user on Sina Weibo, Sina.com’s popular Twitter-like micro-blogging service, wrote about the interview.

“Sunlight at last!” wrote another on the website of Phoenix TV, one of the few online sites that published a Chinese summary of the interview.

The exclusive interview, Wen’s first with a Western journalist since he spoke with Zakaria in 2008 on CNN, began spreading through the Chinese Internet almost as soon as it was posted online.

Already a popular figure among the masses at home, Wen has been making waves in and outside of China recently by openly discussing political reform, including on a visit to Shenzhen in August during which he predicted China’s economic reforms would eventually fail without reforms to the country’s political system (in Chinese).

Speaking through a translator to Zakaria, Wen was calm and measured throughout the interview, and clearly came prepared on the topic of reform, sidestepping a challenge from Zakaria on censorship with a nevertheless strong statement in support of greater freedom.

“I believe I and all the Chinese people have such a conviction that China will make continuous progress and the people’s wishes for and needs for democracy and freedom are irresistible,” Wen said. “I hope that you will be able to gradually see the continuous progress of China.”

Later, addressing allegations that he has yet to walk the reform he talks about, he says: “I would like to tell you the following two sentences to reinforce my case on this or my view on this point, that is, I will not fall in spite of a strong wind and harsh rain and I will not yield till the last day of my life.”

There has been skepticism about whether Wen’s comments in recent months really herald a new reform era. But on China’s Internet, an outpouring of support for Wen followed quickly after bilingual Chinese-English transcripts of the interview began appearing.

“If this is real, and if it’s needed, I’ll give my life, too,” wrote “Andrianme” on Sina Weibo.

“The three great men of the last century: Sun Yat-sen, Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping,” read a post that had earned more than 11,000 ‘recommend’ clicks on the Phoenix TV site as of this writing. “If Premier Wen can really push through political reform, he’ll be the first great man of the new century.”

Information about the interview on the Chinese Internet appears to come almost exclusively from Phoenix TV, blogs and micro-blogging services like Sina Weibo. News portals in China are running a commentary on the interview from the official Liberation Daily newspaper that manages not to quote Wen at all, focusing instead on the differences in Zakaria’s questions from 2008 and 2010.

The irony of Wen’s statements on freedom and censorship being censored in official media was not lost on Chinese observers.

“A lot of Chinese people don’t know their premier has been harmonized,” prominent Beijing University Internet researcher Hu Yong wrote on Twitter, using the Chinese euphemism for censorship. “Wen Jiabao’s comments about political reform being censored at least tells us one thing: In front of the big wall, everyone is equal.”

Others, like ‘Idle Notes,’ responded to the news blockage with anger: “The entire world gets to hear our premier speak and our own media doesn’t report it? Whatever you refuse to report, I’ll just post. [Expletive] you propagandists for the Imperial Court!”

While the vast majority of the commentary on Wen’s interview—or what little of it people in China saw—was adulatory, some remained skeptical of the premier’s ability to make good on his rhetoric.

“Let’s not be too naïve here. Who stands to lose the most from political reform?” Sina user ‘Big Uncle 98’ wrote in thinly veiled reference to leaders in Beijing. “Do you think they’ll dig their own graves?… Do you think they’re not afraid they’ll eventually be held to account?”

A post by ‘Own Worst Enemy,’ one of the most popular on Sina Weibo, may have put it best: “It’s not easy being Premier.”

– Josh Chin. Follow him on Twitter@ch_infamous