The year 2014 saw the state of global Internet freedom declining for the fourth consecutive year, with China, Iran and Syrian rated as the world's worst abusers of Internet freedom, according to an annual report from the US-based human rights organization Freedom House, released on Thursday. China was ranked the last but two among the 65 countries and regions examined.

According to a report by the Christian Science Monitor, a US newspaper, Freedom House is 80 percent funded by the US government.

It is another bizarre ranking by a Western organization that attempts to defame China after Transparency International degraded China by 20 places on its corruption perceptions index. However, such moves have no ethical limit, and the motive of ideological attacks can easily be discerned. It actually acts to undermine the reputation of all Western organizations among the Chinese public.

On account of different standards of Internet freedom, any bizarre ranking can be self-justified. But the truth remains solid. It is like sunshine under which the tricks of Freedom House can be easily spotted.

What is the truth? About 600 million Chinese Net users made China the largest netizen group in the world. China has bred superb Internet companies like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, and generated the liveliest online discussions on politics. We do not know how those impressive figures and achievements can be attained without basic Internet freedom.

China has indeed reinforced management over online remarks that violated the Constitution, and has required American Internet giants to abide by Chinese laws if they want to operate in the Chinese market.

 China has to deal with many technical difficulties to strengthen Net management. One of the major difficulties is to continue to promote a lively and prosperous cyberspace and to keep it healthy in the meantime.

Although it is not easy to distinguish the boundary between management and freedom, the Chinese mainstream has supported continuous exploration of managing the Internet in accordance with the law. They oppose both unlimited freedom on the Net and completely suffocating netizens' enthusiasm to speak online due to certain issues.

We hope that the Internet will maintain to be an incisive platform to supervise public opinions and will keep on providing non-governmental innovative impetus for economic growth. In our opinion, we have just started to understand and utilize a cyberspace rich in opportunities. The Chinese Internet should be free and meanwhile ruled by law, otherwise we are going to be marginalized.