Word: eventer
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...most important foreign policy considerations. It puts a huge amount of effort into diplomatically isolating Taiwan, which Beijing considers Chinese territory that should be reunified by force if necessary. China maintains an estimated 1,300 ballistic missiles along the Taiwan Strait to be used against the island in event of war. While the U.S. does not have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, it remains its biggest ally and protector. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, U.S. law requires that it sell military hardware to provide for Taiwan's defense, which infuriates China. Last year Beijing cut off military-to-military interactions...
...State Department had also been reaching out to Chinese bloggers in anticipation of Monday's event. On Nov. 12, the U.S. embassy in Beijing invited a dozen prominent bloggers to a briefing on American policy toward China, both in person and via live Web feeds to the U.S. consulates in Shanghai and Guangzhou...
...same time, White House officials had been preparing alternate means of broadcasting the town hall online. The event, which took place Monday at 12:45 p.m. local time, was shown live over Whitehouse.gov, and Obama took a number of questions from an online Chinese audience. But it was the President's own remarks which will have made for the main headlines. Obama defending the freedom of the internet by stating that "I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable." He also...
...first time a U.S. President had ever hosted a town hall in the Communist Party-controlled state, and the terms of the event were carefully negotiated between diplomats from both countries. The selection of the audience aside, Chinese authorities also picked three questions that had been submitted over the Internet - including one that was sharply critical of U.S. support for the Taiwanese military. U.S. ambassador Jon Huntsman read an additional question, which the White House said had been randomly selected from a group of online submissions acquired by the U.S. government...
...Huntsman's question, the most controversial of the night, asked about the "great firewall" that prevents open access to the Internet in China, where many websites are blocked by government censors. "I'm a big supporter of noncensorship," Obama said in a section of the event that was described on the website of Xinhua, the state-run news agency. "This is part of the tradition of the United States." (See the 50 best websites...