Mr. Ethan Gutmann:

A failed Western politician, Mr. John Edwards, said there were two Chinas. There is the China we see and in which I have operated as I lived in Beijing for years. We mentioned freedom of the Internet and so forth. In July 2009 all of Xinjiang was cut off from the Internet for nine months. It is a massive area of the country and the impact on business was unbelievable. It is a very different picture in different provinces and places. In many cases, we are almost talking about a series of different nations. A rights consciousness has grown as Chinese people become more sophisticated every day. Having some money in their pockets helps a lot. It is also true the self-suppression or self-censorship promoted by the Chinese Government is incredibly successful. Certain issues are not touched on at all and this is one of them. Having said that, after Bo Xilai was arrested and while the leadership crisis was in full swing, an interesting thing happened. For one night only the words "live harvest" were searchable on Baidu, the Chinese Google. One was able to read anything and lots of people did. The people who could speak English read a lot of American congressional testimony. That was some kind of stunt being pulled by one faction against another, probably asking, "How far do you want to go with this?" or "Do you want to drive the Communist Party down?" or "What is the deal?" China is still a very controlled state. Of course, the NSA is looking at many things and there is surveillance ongoing all over the world. The difference here is that the surveillance has massive consequences for those who slip up. Falun Gong was an extremely powerful and strong movement and surprisingly adept at surveying. From the Chinese perspective, it became a toxic acid which had to be destroyed. They could not even be released from prison. That has been a problem throughout.