Peter Hays Gries Quotes

“You are dictatorial.” My dear sirs, you are right, that is just what we are. All the experience the Chinese people have accumulated through several decades teaches us to enforce the people's democratic dictatorship, that is, to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

To uphold state security China like many other countries of the world has placed some restrictions on the Internet to protect the freedom of the majority of the people.

The Internet is the best thing that could have happened to China.

Taiwan is the one issue that goes to the heart of the domestic and international legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to rule China. The CCP claims to be the only group that was capable of unifying China and making it strong enough to stand up to the bullying of Western powers and imperial Japan. The existence of Taiwan as an autonomous political entity which is de facto independent of the PRC calls into question these claims.

Communications are better now than in my Vietnam days.

Even with censorship, the Internet is a force for change.

Industrial capitalism brought representative democracy, but with a weak public mandate and inert citizenry. The digital age offers a new democracy based on public deliberation and active citizenship.

Pages on Facebook are allowed to be anonymous. That is really important. People start revolutions; we need anonymity.

Unlike the Soviet Communist party, the Chinese Communist party chose to introduce capitalism.

The advantage of the internet is that it has taken away the charade of politics. China has heard of democracy and people know about certain concepts they wouldn't have previously.

Now is the time for all Alaskans to come together and reach out with our core message of taking power from the federal government and bringing it back home to the people.

The Internet is truly God's gift to the Chinese people.

Activists and geeks, standing together, are demonstrating powers beyond the reach of government control.

Russian young people spend countless hours online downloading videos and having a very nice digital entertainment lifestyle, which does not necessarily turn them into the next Che Guevara.

The Arab spring that began in 2010 was driven by the educated youth who were connected to the outside world. They had visions of liberal politics derived from social networks. They used innovative means to spread awareness and to network among activists.

When someone at the State Department proclaims Facebook to be the most organic tool for promoting democracy the world has ever seen - that's a direct quote - it may help in the short run by getting more people onto Facebook by making it more popular with dissidents.

Reform is China's second revolution.

One repressive state after another has had to face the dilemma of wanting abundant Internet for economic advancement, while ruing the ways in which its citizens can become empowered to express themselves fearlessly.

The internet, Facebook and Twitter have created mass communications and social spaces that regimes cannot control.

This is the conundrum of the present regimes in the Arab world. They still want to control youth; they want to be in control as they did in the 1950s and '60s. But that doesn't work anymore. Now with just a Wi-Fi link, you can understand what's happening in the world.

Ordinary Chinese can actually make choices about their own lives which wasn’t possible 25 years ago.

Where nationalism is the main issue, the demand for democracy always takes second place.

[We must] accelerate the reform of our political system, especially the building of a system of socialist democracy based on law …. Democracy is a worldwide trend …. If the Party doesn’t hold up the banner of democracy in our country, someone else will, and we will lose out.

Police states cannot endure under the advance of the computer because it increases the power of the people far faster than the powers of surveillance.