The U.S president Barack Obama has just arrived at Shanghai and started his first official visit to China. In the past two weeks, Chinese twitterers have been using the tag #obamacn to pose questions and comments and one of their major concerns is about the Great Fire Wall.
Please help tearing down the Wall!
The most widely circulated tweet was posted by Guangzhou blogger wenyunchao:
奥巴马总统,请跟胡锦涛主席说:柏林墙已经被推倒了20年,请拆除GFW这堵墙。(Link)
Indeed, a great number of tweets have expressed similar concern. Here are a few examples:
czdmmaochong: Obama,pl pull down the fucking Great Firewall! (link)
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cranewang: @barackobama China's effort to block the web is affecting both US inet companies & civil liberty in cn. will u do anything? (link)
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newsinchina: President Obama,Please ask Mr.Hu to visit berlintwitterwall.com to listen to the voice of Chinese netizen. (link)
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Free2E: Chinese now hope to pull down GFW. Please told Chairman Hu to pull off GFW, and give freedom to chinese (Free2E: Chinese now hope to pull down GFW. Please told Chairman Hu to pull off GFW, and give freedom to chinese
http://twitter.com/Free2E/statuses/5441100439>Link)
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greenhome521: what can America do with the censorship in China?(link)
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Trigant: Mr. Obama, help us KO the bloody GFW. Yes, you can! Thank you very much.(Link)
Live casting Town hall meeting via Twitter and Facebook
Meanwhile, Obama's first public activity in China would be the Town Hall-style meeting with students in Shanghai at 12:45pm today local time (16-Nov-2009). According to the Whitehouse blog:
the President will interact with young Chinese and discuss the relationship between our two countries in the years ahead. Attendees of the event will come from several Universities in the Shanghai area. During this event, the President will take questions from the live audience, as well as from the online Chinese community. The online community in China has been submitting questions on a variety of websites including Xinhuanet, Sohu and the U.S. Embassy in Beijing’s website.
The Town Hall will be livestreamed on Whitehouse.gov/live. You can also join us on the official White House page on Facebook or the Embassy's website to view and participate in a live discussion during the event.
Apart from these official arrangements, the U.S Consulate General in Guangzhou will also live cast the Shanghai meeting via the twitter account
Will Obama be wall-ed?
Since both facebook and twitter are now blocked in China, twitterers wonder if the Chinese government would show its hospitality to Obama by unblocking the sites tomorrow? If that's the case, for how long will these sites be accessible to Chinese netizens? Twitterers like try2feel wonder:
Thinking what Obama will say in SH when Chinese youth ask him how 2 connect Facebook & Twitter in this country #Obamacn (Link)