A few weeks after the announcement that some of America’s most well-known diplomats would be building a permanent residence in Shanghai, one of the lesser known U.S. players made a trip across the Pacific.  Or, that is at least what you would believe if you were a Chinese resident following the news last night.  Apparently in terms of overall newsworthiness, President Obama visiting China and having a town hall discussion with Chinese students isn’t much of a story.  Maybe that’s because the media knew that the so-called ‘students’ were hand-picked for their brand loyalty, and that the most interesting question of the evening, regarding internet censorship, would come from the U.S. Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman.  And even though the Chinese Internet portal Netease found the story compelling for a brief period of time and posted Obama's answer to Huntsman's question, Netease must have felt the story lost its appeal after only 27 minutes because they consequently removed it. (More after the jump)
 

While other U.S. presidents like George W. Bush and Bill Clinton received live coverage during their visits to China even while discussing politically sensitive topics, Obama's overall coverage has been limited. According to the New York Times "In 1998, President Bill Clinton staged a nationally broadcast discussion with the president at the time, Jiang Zemin, about human rights, the Dalai Lama and perhaps China’s most taboo topic, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In 2002, President George W. Bush stressed liberty, rule of law and faith in a speech to university students broadcast across China."  The difference with Obama may be accounted for in any number of ways - that China's current leadership is more focused on social stability than previous ones, that it was Obama's freeform style and town hall setting that proved to be too unpredictable for the Chinese government, etc.  Either way, while Obama is still not as scary to the CCP as other Nobel Peace Prize winners, his message is still frightening enough to warrant censorship.