True censorship isn’t Twitter obscuring power, it’s power obscuring Twitter. It happens every day in Xi Jinping’s China. Did someone notice? A take by Edward Lucas, Vice President of the Center for European Analysis, editor at “The Times”
Donald Trump’s ban from Twitter is Chinese-style censorship, complains Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former press secretary. Chinese propagandists say that it undermines America’s constitutional free speech protections.
Not really.
Here are a few differences. Xi Jinping — Trump’s counterpart in Beijing — is not going to get banned from anything in China. American companies make their own decisions, including telling the most powerful man in the country, and his friends and supporters, to take his business elsewhere. That’s unimaginable in China, where businesses do as they’re told.
Second, if you do get banned from WeChat, the dominant Chinese social media, you don’t just lose your soapbox. Daily life (shopping, for example) becomes difficult to impossible. Also, you become invisible: searches for your name come up blank. Those searching for you risk trouble.
Third, President Trump has a host of other broadcast and other news outlets. In China, your only chance of being heard, or heard of, would be media in the outside world.
Fourth, the US Constitution protects press freedom from the government. It doesn’t give individuals the right to be heard.
Technological progress always moves faster than the laws and norms needed to constrain it. Free societies constantly bridge that gap by trial and error, amid vigorous public discussions, political debate, litigation and campaigning. In China, the Communist Party leadership makes those decisions, in secret.
That’s a big difference.
