The reaction of China to the disclosure by WikiLeaks of U.S. diplomatic cables is particularly interesting. According to this editorial from China’s state-run Global Times, Beijing suspects that the U.S. may have some kind of ‘tacit understanding’ with WikiLeaks. But even if WikiLeaks developed organically, the editorial says that China is concerned that as a child of the Western-dominated Internet, it could end up damaging its own interests far more than it appears to have hurt the United States.
The Global Times editorial says in part:
The U.S. State Department publicly condemned WikiLeaks, but that only raised the latter’s global visibility. Neither side has put a fist in the other’s heart, and this performance brings people to think that the two have a tacit understanding.
The Internet is a creation of the United States, and now all domain name tags and servers are based in the United States. American companies like Google and Facebook and other American sites influence the world, yet the U.S. has never suffered any political losses due to the Internet. What will WikiLeaks do to make the world believe that it’s an exception?
It would be rather rash to assert that the U.S. government staged this “masochistic plan” with WikiLeaks. But given its lucky access to “confidential” U.S. documents and its sudden popularity, it’s necessary for a country like China to take precautions.
Given that it emerged from its own soil, perhaps mature Western society has a natural immunity toward WikiLeaks and can overcome the initial trouble it has brought and turn WikiLeaks to its advantage. In the future, those who will face the greatest challenges from WikiLeaks will be non-Western countries with lesser degrees of social tolerance. If the authority of WikiLeaks has been established after triggering nothing but banter in the West, it may now “decrypt” files that are truly subversive in the non-Western world, and undermine countries regarded as the real enemies.
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