China yesterday dismissed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's criticism that it was jamming the free flow of words and ideas on the Internet and accused the United States of "information imperialism." Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said the nation's Internet regulations were in line with its laws and did not hamper the cyber activities of the world's largest online population. Phil Deans, a China expert at Temple University's Japan campus in Tokyo, said Beijing would likely view Clinton's comments as further confirmation that the current administration was no more amenable to its world view than the preceding one.