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Obama’s India trip sends important message to world: White House

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Washington: Ahead of President Barack Obama’s trip to India, US officials have described it as an “important message” to the world about the two nations’ commitment to realise the full potential of their relationship.

Since the time he took office, Obama had “made increasing US engagement with India a top foreign policy priority” Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said Tuesday.

The first state visit he hosted at the White House was for the then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, he noted.

Obama himself travelled to India in the first part of his first term inoffice, he said in a media preview of the three day visit beginning Sunday to become the first American leader to be he the guest of honour at India’s Republic Day.

“That’s rooted in the belief we have that US cooperation with India can significantly advance our interests in terms of promoting economic ties and increased exports to a growing market,” Rhodes said.

“That’s based on our belief that our Asia Pacific policy benefits from closer ties with India, and it’s also based on our cooperation on broad ranges of global issues,” he said.

Since his victory in the last Indian election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made clear his interest in expanding US-India relations, Rhodes said.

After his very successful visit, Modi took the “unprecedented step of inviting President Obama to be the chief guest at India’s Republic Day celebrations,” he said describing it as “an enormously important event for the Indian people.”

For “President Obama to be invited as the first US President to attend as the chief guest sends a very important message to the world as well as to the American and Indian people about our commitment to embrace the potential of this relationship,” Rhodes said.

“There’s extraordinary potential in this relationship,” he said. “What we want to do is turn that potential into concrete benefits for both of our peoples.”

The trip, Rhodes said, “comes at a time when we have a growing agenda with India.

“And a lot of what the President wants to get done over the course of the next two years will benefit greatly from closer cooperation with India.”

Phil Reiner, Senior Director at the National Security Council for South Asia, called it “a seminal moment in the bilateral relationship, and that the extension of this invitation by the Prime Minister really continues to set a different tone for our reinvigorated partnership.”

Noting that “terrorism is an issue that can unite people who have faced traditional divides,” Rhodes said the US had “encouraged India and Pakistan to pursue a dialogue to resolve their bilateral issues, and have been very supportive of that process.”

He acknowledged that some Pakistan based militant groups “have a nexus to many different organizations that have threatened India, the United States and, again, importantly, the Pakistani people as well.”

Asked if the US had wrestled with the diplomatic implications of going to India without going to Pakistan, Rhodes described the US-Pakistan relationship as “incredibly important to our shared security.”

But as the President had made clear the last time he went to India “we don’t view these relationships as taking place at the expense of the other; that we can have a good relationship with India and we can have a good relationship with Pakistan,” he said.

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Lockdowns in China Force Urban Communities to Defy Censorship and Vent Frustration Online

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Anyip Mobile Proxies

Shanghai’s rich middle class is leading a wave of online dissent over the strict and prolonged lockdowns imposed in various parts of the country. Chinese internet censorship is struggling as patience is wearing thin in many urban centers, coming up with creative forms of online protests.

Social Media Posts Revealing Lockdown Tension in Shanghai

Drawn-out lockdowns are nothing new in China as authorities insist with the nation’s zero-Covid policy since the start of the pandemic. Currently over This time around, however, metropolitan areas like Shanghai are increasingly difficult to keep quiet, given that its more than 25 million residents have seen weeks of total isolation along with food shortages and many other service interruptions.

Dozens of towns and reportedly over 300 million Chinese citizens have been affected by lockdowns of different severity. As expected, urban netizens have been most outspoken over their difficulties by finding creative ways to get around state censorship and bans placed on topics, news comments and spontaneous campaigns.

Shanghai residents have been using mobile proxies and hijacking seemingly unrelated hashtags to talk about healthcare issues, delivery failures and the overall severity of their situation. The “positive energy” that the Chinese government wants to transmit during the recent prolonged series of lockdowns does not come naturally to those counting food supplies and online censors are working hard to filter words, trending topics and undesired social media sharing.

WeChat groups and message threads are under constant monitoring. Posts questioning the zero-Covid approach have been quickly deleted, including by leading Chinese health experts like Dr. Zhong Nanshan. Video footage is soon censored and protests and investigations are quickly made to disappear.

Where this has not worked, officials have exposed banners with warnings and outright threats like “watch your own mouth or face punishment”, while drones have been patrolling the city skies. Yet, if anything, this has led to further tensions and unspoken confrontation with Shanghai’s educated and affluent middle class.

Creative Online Solutions Harnessing Civic Energy

Announcements by Chinese social media that they would be publishing the IP addresses of users who “spread rumors” have not helped either. Tech industry research has shown that much of Asia’s tech-savvy population has a habit of using mobile proxies and other privacy tools, quickly finding workarounds to browse the internet freely and talk to the world about the hottest topics.

The sheer volume of forbidden posts is already a challenge for the very censorship system, experts explain. Unable to track all trending hashtags, state workers overlook topics that speak about the US, Ukraine or other popular news. Linking human rights elsewhere to their situation, Chinese online dissidents establish their informal channels and “hijack” the conversation to share personal or publicly relevant information about the Covid suppression in their town.

Sarcastic and satirical posts still dominate. Others hope to evade the censors by replacing words from famous poems or the national anthem. One thing is certain – social media, when harnessed with the right creativity, has proven its ability to mount pressure on the government in even some of the most strictly controlled tech environments like China.

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