Beijing has made the landmark decision to lift a ban on internet access within the Shanghai Free-trade Zone to foreign websites considered politically sensitive by the Chinese government, including Facebook, Twitter and newspaper website The New York Times.
“In order to welcome foreign companies to invest and to let foreigners live and work happily in the free-trade zone, we must think about how we can make them feel like at home. If they can’t get onto Facebook or read The New York Times, they may naturally wonder how special the free-trade zone is compared with the rest of China,” said one of the government sources who declined to be named due to the highly political sensitive nature of the matter. The free-trade zone could be eventually expanded over the next few years. The government hopes the free-trade zone will attract more foreign investment and liberalise the nation’s foreign exchange and interest rate system, making capital flow much more easily. Although China’s economy is now already the world’s second largest, Beijing keeps tight control over the media. Foreign visitors and many foreigners who reside on the mainland for work and study have complained about difficulties in accessing those news sites. Allowing foreign telecommunications companies to compete with state-owned telecommunications enterprises is a long-awaited breakthrough that would be welcomed by several former top leaders, but there has been little progress in the past partly due to domestic political pressure. State media has described the Shanghai Free-trade Zone, which has won direct and decisive support from top Chinese leaders including Premier Li Keqiang despite open opposition from some industry regulators, just as important as Deng Xiaoping’s decision to open up the Shenzhen special economic zones to foreign investors about three decades ago.
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