Future prejudices of China will be born not in the columns of the print media and in the radio and TV reports, but in the mushrooming blogs and micro-blogs of the digital world... Future stability will depend not only on what happens in the real world, but also on what happens in the digital world.

What the people think of their leadership and government will be increasingly reflected not in the traditional print and TV media, but in the digital media and in the blogs and micro-blogs of the digital world. The digital image of China in the international net community will increasingly influence governmental and non-governmental perceptions of China.

My Brookings paper which launched today, Baked in and Wired: eDiplomacy @ State, tracks State’s remarkable emergence as the leading innovator in its field. It drills into three areas where its use of ediplomacy has been particularly striking: public diplomacy, internet freedom, and knowledge management.

“This is a key point for digital diplomacy – the importance of reaching a broader audience, not just the same old people who usually follow foreign affairs.” As such, top diplomats are increasingly holding live, virtual chats on social networks to engage with people whom they would otherwise never meet.

In the near future, no one will be able to become a leader without digital followers, and no diplomat will be well-positioned to represent his or her country if he or she does not personally engage on social networks. And it is not the size of the followership that matters, but the quality of the conversations.

The issue of whether U.S. agents on the ground were speaking on their own authority or representing the Obama administration policy isn't an academic fine point. It raises big questions about how a new form of diplomacy, a kind conducted by way of digital media, subverts and overturns traditional ways of carrying out a critical governmental function... Digital diplomacy can thrive only if foreign ministries accept some uncertainty over what to do and how to behave.