Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton picked the right battle this week, calling for an end to Internet censorship and naming governments that suppress the free flow of information - including China, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Tunisia and Uzbekistan.

Her speech, at the Newseum in Washington, had pointed echoes of the cold war, including a warning that"a new information curtain is descending across much of the world." Anyone who finds that overheated should remember how hard Iran's government worked to shut down the Web during last summer's bloody, pro-democracy protests - and the power of the images and words that managed to get through.

Mrs. Clinton also placed the Obama administration squarely on the side of Google in its fight with China over Internet censorship and cyberattacks. She called on the Chinese government to conduct a thorough and transparent review of Google's accusations that Gmail accounts used by Chinese human rights activists had been hacked into from the mainland. And she called on other American companies to challenge "foreign governments' demands for censorship and surveillance."

It will take more than just a tough speech to change China's policies, and more than a tough speech to change the policies of far too many companies that enable Beijing and other repressive governments when they accept censorship as a normal price of doing business.

But there is no doubt that Chinese authorities - which had hoped to play down the fight with Google - are listening and getting nervous.

On Friday, the day after the speech, a spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry called on the United States "to stop using the so-called Internet freedom question to level baseless accusations." The spokesman also insisted that "the Chinese Internet is open." The Chinese people know better. So should China's government.

The New York Times, January 22, 2010