Do VOA and RFA lack street cred in China?

"One-way monologues through the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia don't have much street cred with China's Internet generation, to be honest. It's time to upgrade your public diplomacy strategy for the 21st Century. ... The U.S. embassy in Beijing should build a Chinese-language website modeled after change.gov, focused not just on U.S.-China relations, but on the range of concerns and interests - from environment, to food safety, to factory safety standards, to education and real estate law -- shared by ordinary Chinese and Americans. Some linguistically talented State Department employees should start blogging in Chinese. Open up the comments sections, see how the Chinese blogosphere responds, then respond to them in turn. Translate some of the Chinese conversation into English for Americans to read and react, then translate it back. Sure there will be censorship problems on the Chinese side, but if enough Chinese find the conversation important and relevant to their lives, the censors ultimately won't be able to stop it." Rebecca McKinnon's Blog, 27 January 2009.
     Well, there is already 美国参考 -- America.gov in Chinese. It or some other site could be operated out of the U.S. embassy in Beijing, but the Chinese authorities could still block it, just as they block thousands of other sites. "Public diplomacy strategy for the 21st century" notwithstanding, the question remains how to get information into a country that is hellbent on blocking that information. Although savvy internet users in China can try to use proxy sites and anti-censorship software, the internet retains the disadvantage of using landlines inside China. Shortwave radio, that quaint 20th century medium, has the advantage of dropping into China wirelessly. The physics of shortwave favors distant over nearby signals, providing a natural resistance to jamming. Shortwave radios of improving quality are being sold in China. A strategy that drops shortwave in favor of the internet could put China into an information blackout. Posted: 29 Jan 2009 Permalink Print