Obama under fire for China anti-terrorism remarks

Many Internet users have expressed their dissatisfaction with a recent remark by the U.S. President Barack Obama that China's new draft anti-terrorism law would hinder the interests of U.S. companies, CRI Online reported.

At an interview with Reuters on Monday, Obama expressed his concern that China's anti-terrorism law would require tech companies to hand over the encryption keys to the Chinese government, and install "backdoors" in the system to allow surveillance from Chinese regulators. Reuters also reported that Obama has urged "Beijing to change the policy if it wants to do business with the United States."

Obama's remark instantly drew criticism on the Internet, with many claiming that "it sounds rude." The objections came because the United States is known as an online surveillance superpower but nonetheless turned to criticize China.

According to the Reuters report, the draft anti-terrorism law, which is still being deliberated by China's top legislature, applies to all companies -- both domestic and international -- doing business in China, but many Washington officials and Western business groups argued that "the new banking rules and the slew of anti-trust investigations amount to unfair regulatory pressure targeting foreign companies."

The Reuters report also pointed out that China was not the first to put technology companies under surveillance. The FBI and NSA both forced Apple and Google last year not to use encryption that law enforcement could not break so that the U.S. government could extract users' personal data in probing crimes or issues of concern to national security.

Most of the online criticism was about the hypocrisy of the U.S. government, since it has been applying double standards for itself and others, arguing that Washington keeps telling others to observe game rules, while constantly changing the rules itself. Others were more concerned that the possible exodus of U.S. technology firms from China would fundamentally hinder the interests of the United States.