Obama's Town Hall: Recap
Since our live blogging of Obama's town hall meeting with Chinese students earlier today, a few interesting things have come to light.
First of all, it seems that many of the students that were in the audience were actually shanzai plants. Turns out one of the fake students to ask Obama a question was in fact the Vice Director of Daily Affairs for the Communist Youth League at Fudan University's Graduate School, and another was in fact a teacher who just happened to look young: you can read his blog about teaching here (if you can read Chinese). Sneaky, China, sneaky.
Secondly, we found a video of Obama replying to the question about internet freedom in China and around the world. In case you had the misfortune of watching the town hall meeting pretty much anywhere besides the live stream offered by the White House, it seems like the Chinese media censored a lot of the president's response to this question. In any case, enough people in China heard it to prompt a quick response: Google China's top searches this afternoon were "What is Twitter?" and "Obama Shanghai." Pretty cool, though we do feel bad that Obama's slow thumbs keep him from Tweeting. Which only makes us question: who are we following on BarackObama @ Twitter?