Former US-president Clinton this morning at the US embassy in Beijing

internet - Also Clinton pleads ignorance in Yahoo-case

Not only Alibaba's CEO Jack Ma claimed he learned only about the Yahoo-case, where the US IT-giant helped China's judicial authorities to jail the Chinese journalist Shi Tao. (See my previous entry.)
Clinton said to AP this morning in Beijing he only learned about the issue this morning.

He explained this Sunday by saying he was suffering from a bad cold and "didn't know about that issue until this morning."

"I would've raised it in the speech to the Internet people had I known about it," he said after speaking at a U.S. Embassy service commemorating the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the United States.

Clinton did, however, challenge the Chinese government's polices on dissent.

"The more China grows and diversifies economically and opens up to the rest of the world, the more there will have to be some room for dissent," he said at the embassy. "I don't think conflicting information and debate weakens a society. I think it strengthens it."

He added: "In the end there'll have to be more freedom of expression here."

One of the issues I want to raise tomorrow in my speech at the conference at the China Sourcing Fair in Duesseldorf is the need for Chinese companies to get more and better information. But then, if even well-connected people like Jack Ma and Bill Clinton are able to claim ignorance in this kind of cases, there is a lot of work to be done. You just wonder how important journalists and bloggers are.