China has said Google's decision to stop censoring Chinese search results is "totally wrong" and violatesits promise to abide by local laws. The US giant is redirecting users in mainland China to its unrestricted Hong Kong site,although Chinese firewalls mean results still come back censored.. Beijing said the decision should not affect ties with Washington. Google threatened to leave the Chinese market completely this year after cyberattacks traced back to China.
Google's move to shut its mainland Chinese search service is a major blow to China's international image, the BBC's Damian Grammaticasreports from Beijing. It means one of the world's most prominent corporations is saying it is no longer willing to co-operate in China'scensorship of the internet, our correspondent says. China has moved to further limit free speech on the web - Google's own websitesand the e-mail accounts of human rights activists have recently comeunder cyber attack. 'Politicisation of commercial issues' Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters that Google's movewas an isolated act by a commercial company and should not affectChina-US ties "unless politicised" by others.
The government would handle the Google case "according to the law", he added. Earlier an official in the Chinese government office which oversees the internet said: "Google has violated its writtenpromise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filteringits searching service and blaming China in insinuation for allegedhacker attacks." "This is totally wrong. We're uncompromisingly opposed to the politicisation of commercial issues, and express ourdiscontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusationsand conducts," the unnamed official was quoted as saying by Chinesestate news agency Xinhua. Chen Yafei, a Chinese information technology specialist, told Reuters that Google should have acceptedChinese regulation if it wanted to operate in the country. "Any company entering China should abide by Chinese laws," he said. "Google has its own credos. The fighting between Google and the Chinesegovernment is their own business. Chinese internet users will have noregrets if Google withdraws." Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, said earlier that providing uncensored searches through theHong Kong-based google.com.hk website was was "entirely legal" and would"meaningfully increase access to information for people in China". "We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision,though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to ourservices," he wrote in a blog post. The White House said it was "disappointed" that Google and China had not been able to resolve theirdifferences. Sophisticated censorship One cause of the row was Google's revelation on 12 January that it - and more than 20other companies - had been the victim of a cyber attack that originatedinside China.
During the attack Google lost some intellectual property and discovered that the attack was aimed at the GMail accounts of humanrights activists. This attack led Google to "review the feasibility" ofits Chinese operations. In the blog entry posted on 22 March, Google said it would maintain an R&D and sales presence in China. It said the size of its sales team would depend on how many Chinese peoplecan get at the Hong Kong-based site. Currently about 700 of Google's20,000 strong workforce are based in China. On Sunday, state media in China attacked Google for what they described as the company's"intricate ties" with the US government. Google provided US intelligence agencies with a record of its search engine results, Xinhuasaid. While Google is the world's most popular search engine, it is a distant number two in the Chinese market, which is dominated byBaidu. However, because of the size and growth rate of China's internet population, any loss of business there is likely to harmGoogle's future growth prospects. Analysts said that initially Google's prospects would not be dented by shutting down Google.cn as itis responsible, at most, for 2% of its annual $24bn (£15.9bn) revenue. China operates one of the most sophisticated and wide-reaching censorshipsystems in the world. Thousands of police officers are employed to monitor web activity and many automated systems watch blogs, chatrooms and other sites to ensure that banned subjects, such as TiananmenSquare, are not discussed. |
Chinese-language Google search home page, 23 March " border="0" height="170" hspace="0" vspace="0" width="226"">
Chinese internet users will have no regrets if Google withdraws
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