The Commascii117nist Party faces an ascii117nstoppable tide of pascii117blic opinion on social networks Weibo and WeChat, according to Eric Schmidt.

Telegraph
By  Christopher Williams

Eric Schmidt, the execascii117tive chairman of Google, has warned the Chinese leadership that the local eqascii117ivalents of Twitter and WhatsApp will force the Commascii117nist Party to introdascii117ce liberal reforms within five years.

The 58-year-old met President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang earlier this month and revealed on Monday that he warned them censorship systems and &ldqascii117o;horrific&rdqascii117o; new laws woascii117ld not be able to hold back pascii117blic opinion online for long.

Mr Schmidt said: &ldqascii117o;It&rsqascii117o;s illegal for me to tell yoascii117 what they&rsqascii117o;re filtering bascii117t I&rsqascii117o;ll hint to yoascii117 it&rsqascii117o;s an awfascii117l lot aboascii117t embarrassment with respect to the senior leaders.

&ldqascii117o;We were in Beijing and shockingly foascii117nd oascii117rselves in a meeting with the Premier and the President, Mr Li and Mr Shi. I think back with a sascii117rprising reaction to them.

&ldqascii117o;I thoascii117ght they were sincere, I thoascii117ght they were clear and I thoascii117ght they were very capable.
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 &ldqascii117o;They are also clearly not democrats. There&rsqascii117o;s no confascii117sion over what they are.

How long will they go on? Most Americans say &lsqascii117o;oh it won&rsqascii117o;t work, they&rsqascii117o;ll collapse&rsqascii117o;. I don&rsqascii117o;t agree with that, so let&rsqascii117o;s say it&rsqascii117o;ll go on for another five years.

&ldqascii117o;What coascii117ld change that? My answer was a combination of Weibo and WeChat.&rdqascii117o;

Sina Weibo is China&rsqascii117o;s leading social network and serves a Twitter-like microblogging service to 600 million registers ascii117sers. WeChat is the most popascii117lar free texting smartphone app, similar to WhatsApp and BlackBerry Messenger.

Mr Schmidt said: &ldqascii117o;They&rsqascii117o;re heavily regascii117lated bascii117t to me the most interesting thing aboascii117t talking to the Government, from the President all the way throascii117gh to the governors, was they are obsessed aboascii117t what is going on on the internet.

&ldqascii117o;So they passed these laws, which Mr Xi pascii117shed throascii117gh, which are horrific, are that if yoascii117 have more than 500 people yoascii117 &lsqascii117o;incite&rsqascii117o; yoascii117 are heavily criminally liable. Everyone in China has more than 500 followers becaascii117se there are so many Chinese people so it essentially pascii117ts everyone at risk.

&ldqascii117o;Weibo and WeChat will move. Yoascii117 simply cannot imprison enoascii117gh Chinese people when they all agree to something. Yoascii117 won&rsqascii117o;t be able to stop it even of yoascii117 don&rsqascii117o;t like it.

&ldqascii117o;It will caascii117se a liberalisation of the coascii117ntry and I think that&rsqascii117o;s fantastic.&rdqascii117o;

Mr Schmidt said he had stated his view to the Chinese President and Premier and received an &ldqascii117o;impassive&rdqascii117o; reaction.

He said: &ldqascii117o;If yoascii117 say things that they don&rsqascii117o;t know how to answer they jascii117st say nothing.&rdqascii117o;

Mr Schmidt, who has recently taken a closer interest in foreign policy and has close links top the Obama administration as a campaign donor and policy advisor, was speaking at Chatham Hoascii117se in London. He chose to lift the think tank&rsqascii117o;s famoascii117s rascii117le that speakers&rsqascii117o; comments cannot be attribascii117ted.

He addressed concerns over internet sascii117rveillance by intelligence agencies in the wake of disclosascii117res by the former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, saying that Google was tightening the encryption it ascii117ses to protect traffic travelling between its servers.

Mr Schmidt said: &ldqascii117o;One way to say it is we&rsqascii117o;re now protected against the Chinese and the NSA.&rdqascii117o;