China attacks Clinton's Internet speech, calls 'harmful' to relations

From my colleague Steve Mufson this morning:

BEIJING -- China's Foreign Ministry sharply criticized Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's Thursday call for broad Internet freedom, saying that the United States should "cease using so-called Internet freedom to make groundless accusations against China."

Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on the ministry's Web site that "the U.S. has criticized China's policies to administer the Internet and insinuated that China restricts Internet freedom. We are firmly against the words and deeds contrary to the facts and harmful to China-U.S. relations."

A Chinese newspaper also joined the criticism of Clinton, who gave her speech in the wake of Google's declaration that it would stop censoring results on its Chinese-based search engine even if that meant losing its license after a cyberattack on its computers.

Here's the whole story.

And here's Post Tech's story on Clinton's speech.