The US has called on Beijing to investigate the recent cyber attacks on Google, which have prompted the search giant to threaten to leave China.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that companies such as Google should refuse to support “politically-motivated censorship”.
She also said China along with Tunisia and Uzbekistan had boosted censorship.
Google says hackers tried to infiltrate its software coding and the e-mail accounts of human rights activists.
China says the row with Google should not be linked to relations with the US.
Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister He Yafei said the rift with the web company should not be “over-interpreted”, according to state news agency Xinhua.
In a speech at the Newseum journalism museum in Washington, Mrs Clinton said the internet had been a “source of tremendous progress” in China, but that Beijing should investigate the attacks on Google.
“We look to Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of the cyber intrusions,” she said.
“We also look for that investigation and its results to be transparent.”
Again in reference to China, she said that any country which restricted free access to information risked “walling themselves off from the progress of the next century”.
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