GOOGLE HAS NOT LEFT CHINA, IT HAS SIMPLY MOVED FROM BEIJING TO HONG KONG. THIS IS LIKE MOVING FROM NEW YORK TO GUAM. THE WORLD APPLAUDS GOOGLE FOR STANDING UP TO THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT BECAUSE THE WORLD STILL THINKS OF HK AS NOT A PART OF CHINA. GOOGLE IS VERY TRICKY.
THE CHRISTIAN BIBLE DEMANDS OBEDIENCE TO GOVERNMENT AUTHORITY – Google, are you listening?
Romans Chapter 13:1-6
1Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. 6This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.
Titus 3:1, TLB.
Remind your people to obey the government and its officers, and always to be obedient and ready for any honest work.
NEW YORK TIMES
China’s Censors Tackle and Trip Over the Internet
This article was reported by Michael Wines, Sharon LaFraniere and Jonathan Ansfield and written by Mr. Wines.
BEIJING — Type the Chinese characters for “carrot” into Google’s search engine here in mainland China, and you will be rewarded not with a list of Internet links, but a blank screen.
Don’t blame Google, however. The fault lies with China’s censors — who are increasingly a model for countries around the world that want to control an unrestricted Internet.
Since late March, when Google moved its search operations out of mainland China to Hong Kong, each response to a Chinese citizen’s search request has been met at the border by government computers, programmed to censor any forbidden information Google might turn up.
“Carrot” — in Mandarin, huluobo — may seem innocuous enough. But it contains the same Chinese character as the surname of President Hu Jintao. And the computers, long programmed to intercept Chinese-language searches on the nation’s leaders, substitute an error message for the search result before it can sneak onto a mainland computer.
This is China’s censorship machine, part George Orwell, part Rube Goldberg: an information sieve of staggering breadth and fineness, yet full of holes; run by banks of advanced computers, but also by thousands of Communist Party drudges; highly sophisticated in some ways, remarkably crude in others.
The one constant is its growing importance. Censorship used to be the sleepy province of the Communist Party’s central propaganda department, whose main task was to tell editors what and what not to print or broadcast. In the new networked China, censorship is a major growth industry, overseen — and fought over — by no fewer than 14 government ministries.
“Press control has really moved to the center of the agenda,” said David Bandurski, an analyst at the China Media Project of the University of Hong Kong. “The Internet is the decisive factor there. It’s the medium that is changing the game in press control, and the party leaders know this.”
Today, China censors everything from the traditional print press to domestic and foreign Internet sites; from cellphone text messages to social networking services; from online chat rooms to blogs, films and e-mail. It even censors online games.
That’s not all. Not content merely to block dissonant views, the government increasingly employs agents to peddle its views online, in the guise of impartial bloggers and chat-room denizens. And increasingly, it is backing state-friendly clones of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, all Western sites that have been blocked here for roughly a year.
The government’s strategy, according to Mr. Bandurski and others, is not just to block unflattering messages, but to overwhelm them with its own positive spin and rebuttals.
The government makes no apologies for what it calls “guiding public opinion.” Regulation is crucial, it says, to keep China from sliding into chaos and to preserve the party’s monopoly on power.
“Whether we can cope with the Internet is a matter that affects the development of socialist culture, the security of information, and the stability of the state,” President Hu said in 2007.
In China’s view, events since then — including the online spread of the democracy manifesto known as Charter 08 and riots in the Tibet and Xinjiang regions, said to be aided by cellphone and Internet communications — have only reinforced that stance.
In the last year, censorship has increased markedly, as evidenced by the closing of thousands of blogs and Web sites in ostensible anti-pornography campaigns, and the jailing of prominent dissidents who used the Internet to spread their views. The departure of Google’s search engine in March only capped months of growing intolerance of unfettered speech.
The paradox — at least at first glance — is that even with such pervasive restraints, China’s press and Internet are capable of freewheeling discourse and social criticism.
Newspapers, blogs and online chats have unleashed national outrages over a host of topics, including food and medicine contamination and local corruption. Bloggers continually tweak the censors, leaking their orders and creating an online land of mythical creatures whose names are all homonyms for aspects of the state’s heavy hand.
Some exposés and satires fall on the acceptable side of an often invisible and shifting line that marks what can and cannot be said freely in China. On the other side are statements that too overtly challenge the Communist Party’s hold on power, that attack or embarrass powerful politicians or that tread on a long list of forbidden topics, from unrest in Tibet to political crises like the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
Journalists and Internet publishers often discover that they have crossed the line only after their online presence is blocked, their bylines are blacklisted or they are detained or summoned to “tea” with government security officers who deliver coy but unmistakable warnings.
With 384 million users in China at last count in January — and 181 million blogs — the Internet poses a true cat-herding predicament for censors. Foreign entities that operate outside China are the lesser of the censors’ problems. The reason is logistical: access to the Internet in China from the outside world is limited, and all traffic must pass through one of three large computer centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.
At those centers, government computers — the so-called Great Firewall — intercept inbound data and compare it with a constantly changing list of forbidden keywords and Web addresses.
When a match occurs, the computers can block the incoming data in several ways, from rejecting it outright to making more nuanced trims. For example, Chinese citizens who search Google using sensitive terms like “Tiananmen” may receive complete summaries of relevant Web sites. But if the Web sites are banned, it is impossible to link to them.
Within China, however, data cannot be choked off at a handful of gateways. So the government employs a toolbox of controls, including persuasion, co-opting and force, to keep the Web in line. Self-censorship is the first line of filtering and an obligation of all network and site operators in China.
China’s big homegrown sites, like Baidu, Sina.com and Sohu, employ throngs of so-called Web administrators to screen their search engines, chat rooms, blogs and other content for material that flouts propaganda directives. For four years, Google followed suit with its Chinese search engine, Google.cn.
The Internet companies’ employees are constantly guessing what is allowed and what will prompt a phone call from government censors. One tactic is to strictly censor risky content at first, then gradually expand access to it week by week, hoping not to trip the censorship wire.
The monitors sit astride a vast and expanding state apparatus that extends to the most remote Chinese town. “There is an Internet monitoring and surveillance unit in every city, wherever you have an Internet connection,” said Xiao Qiang, an analyst of China’s censorship system, at the University of California, Berkeley. “Through that system, they get to every major Web site with content.”
Under a 2005 State Council regulation, personal blogs, computer bulletin boards and even cellphone text messages are deemed part of the news media, subject to sweeping restrictions on their content.
In practice, many of those restrictions are spottily applied. But reminders that someone is watching are pointed and regular.
An inopportune post to a computer chat forum may produce a rejection message chiding the author for “inappropriate content,” and the link to the post may be deleted. Forbidden text messages may be delivered to cellphones as blank screens.
Even so, screening the electronic activities of hundreds of millions of people is a nearly impossible task. Moreover, users increasingly are resorting to technological maneuvers like virtual private networks and proxy servers to sidestep the censors’ blocking of banned Web sites altogether. By some reports, a million people now hurdle the Great Firewall via such dodges — a number that remains a tiny fraction of all users, but that has spiked upward in the last year.
So the censors have taken other tacks to tighten their grip.
One is automation. China’s leading instant-messaging service, called QQ, automatically installs a program on users’ computers that monitors their communications and blocks censored text.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology tried last year to expand automated censorship nationwide through mandatory Green Dam software that could remotely update lists of banned topics. After an outcry from Internet users and corporations, the state backed off, but Green Dam or other filtering software remains installed on computers in some Internet cafes and schools. Last month, the government signaled that a version for cellphones was in the works.
Another strategy is manipulation. In recent years, local and provincial officials have hired armies of low-paid commentators to monitor blogs and chat rooms for sensitive issues, then spin online comment in the government’s favor.
Mr. Xiao of Berkeley cites one example: Jiaozuo, a city southwest of Beijing, deployed 35 Internet commentators and 120 police officers to defuse online attacks on the local police after a traffic dispute. By flooding chat rooms with pro-police comments, the team turned the tone of online comment from negative to positive in just 20 minutes.
According to one official newspaper editor who refused to be named, propaganda authorities now calculate that confronted with a public controversy, local officials have a window of about two hours to block information and flood the Web with their own line before the reaction of citizens is beyond control.
Zhang Shihe, a self-identified citizen journalist and blogger with the pen name Tiger Temple, said the government ranked various bloggers by the risk they posed. “The most dangerous ones will be shut down, and some others will receive alerts from the government,” he said.
Mr. Zhang’s own blog posts are sometimes deleted. His workaround is to publish six blogs, hosted on different Internet sites: because censorship rules are vague and the censors merely human, a post that one blocks may be ignored or overlooked by another.
That may not last long. The consensus is that the government is rapidly getting better at its work.
Consider: One chilling new regulation limits those who can operate a site on China’s .cn domain to registered businesses, and requires operators to produce Chinese identification. “In case they need to shut you down for some subversive content, they need to know how to find you,” said an executive with one Beijing firm that hosts Web sites.
Major cities like Beijing — which last year advertised for 10,000 voluntary Internet monitors — are increasingly taking censorship into their own hands.
Pitted against this are those who argue that government chokeholds on the Internet cannot succeed. Bloggers like Mr. Zhang argue that growing restrictions on Internet speech only inflame ordinary users, and that bit by bit “people are pushing the wall back.”
Or at least trying. At a recent meeting of Chinese Internet leaders in the southern city of Shenzhen, Ding Jian, who heads the Internet company AsiaInfo, proposed that Shenzhen be made a censorship-free zone as an experiment to determine whether China can stomach the chaos of an unfettered Internet. Strangling free speech, one entrepreneur argued, is likely to strangle innovation as well.
The Internet portal NetEase published a report of the meeting. It was quickly deleted.
Li Bibo contributed research.
A version of this article appeared in print on April 8, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.
Go Daddy, Rival Not Offering New China Domain Names (Update3)
By Jeff Bliss
March 24 (Bloomberg) — Go Daddy Group Inc., the world’s largest registrar of domain names, has joined rival Network Solutions LLC in refusing to offer new domain names in China because of what Go Daddy describes as increased Internet spying by the government on its citizens.
Christine Jones, executive vice president and general counsel of Scottsdale, Arizona-based Go Daddy, disclosed the company’s change in policy at a hearing of a congressionally mandated commission today in Washington.
The decision was prompted by a “recent increase in China’s surveillance and monitoring of the Internet activities of its citizens,” Jones told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China.
Herndon, Virginia-based Network Solutions, which was acquired by General Atlantic LLC in 2007, stopped offering China domain names in December because of the government’s requirements for “a lot of other personal information,” said Susan Wade, a company spokesman.
Go Daddy’s announcement comes two days after Google Inc. said it would no longer censor Internet search results in China. Mountain View, California-based Google, the world’s largest search engine, said two days ago it would redirect Chinese readers to its unfiltered Hong Kong Web site.
Google’s Example
“Go Daddy is the first company to follow Google’s example,” said Representative Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican. Go Daddy’s decision is “a powerful sign that American” information technology “companies want to do the right thing in repressive countries.”
Jones today told the commission that the China Internet Network Information Center, a quasi-governmental agency that oversees registration services, has begun requiring more stringent identification and documentation for those seeking domain names.
In addition, the agency said it would audit all China domain name registrations already held by Chinese nationals, Jones said.
“We are concerned for the security of the individuals affected by” the agency’s new rules, she said.
Go Daddy and other domain registrars also were asked to provide to the agency photo and business identification, as well as signed registration forms from Chinese domain registrants, Jones said.
Censoring the Internet
At the same hearing, Alan Davidson, director of public policy at Mountain View, California-based Google, pressed for the U.S. and other governments to consider new trade rules for countries that censor the Internet.
These censorship policies often favor local businesses, he said.
“We should continue to look for effective ways to address unfair foreign trade barriers in the online world,” Davidson said.
The U.S. also should think about tying foreign aid to countries adapting better Internet policies, he said.
In a statement provided to the commission, the Chinese Internet Bureau of the Information Office of the State Council criticized Google’s decision to stop censoring the Internet and not work with the government.
“The Chinese government encourages the development and popularization of the Internet and is committed to opening up the Internet,” the statement said.
China has 384 million Internet users, according to government data, more than the total U.S. population.
–Editors: Jim Rubin, Don Frederick.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff Bliss in Washington at jbliss@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jim Kirk at jkirk12@bloomberg.net
NEW YORK TIMES
Google Calls for Action on Web Limits
By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
Published: March 24, 2010
A top Google executive on Wednesday called for rules to put pressure on governments that filter the Internet, saying the practice was hindering international trade.
Google vs. China
Alan Davidson, director of public policy for Google, told a joint Congressional panel that the United States should consider withholding development aid for countries that restrict certain Web sites. He said censorship had become more than a human rights issue and was hurting profit for foreign companies that rely on the Internet to reach customers.
“The growing problem for Internet censorship is not isolated to one country or one region,” Mr. Davidson told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. “No single company and no single industry can tackle Internet censorship on its own.”
The fallout from China’s restrictive Internet policies widened on Wednesday when officials from Go Daddy Group, an Internet services company, told the commission that the company would halt registration of Chinese domain names.
Christine Jones, general counsel of Go Daddy, said the company was concerned about privacy after Chinese officials requested photo identification and signatures of its customers. For the first time, she said, Go Daddy had been asked to retroactively obtain documentation for individuals who had registered a domain name.
“We’re concerned about the chilling effect,” Ms. Jones said. “We made the decision that we didn’t want to act as an agent of the Chinese government.”
Ms. Jones described a chaotic scene for Internet companies in China. She said attacks from hackers were rampant, fraudulent payments were common, and spammers worked without fear of punishment from the government.
Representative David Wu, Democrat of Oregon, said he thought more companies would follow the example of Go Daddy and Google and cut back operations in China. “Pretty soon you have a cascade going,” Mr. Wu said. “There is a difference between compliance and complicity.”
More than 40 countries actively censor the Internet currently, Mr. Davidson said, and 25 governments have blocked Google over the last several years. Mr. Davidson suggested asking countries to pledge to keep sites unfiltered in international trade agreements.
On Monday, Google closed its Internet search service in China and began directing users in that country to its uncensored search engine in Hong Kong. So far, Mr. Davidson said, the company had noticed “intermittent” censorship of the Hong Kong site. Despite the restrictions, the company plans to maintain a sales team in mainland China, he said.
Google’s decision to leave China was prompted in part by a series of attacks by hackers last year, which raised broader concerns about the flow of information in the country. The Chinese government has disputed that it was the source of the attacks, which focused on e-mail accounts of human rights advocates.
Mr. Davidson said Google would consider returning to the Chinese market if the government there removed its restrictions. But he acknowledged that there would likely be a “hard road ahead” because neither side is willing to cede ground.
“It’s going to take a lot of work to combat that censorship,” he said.
In a statement to the commission, Chinese officials defended their policies, saying, “foreign companies need to abide by Chinese laws and regulations when they operate in China.”
“The Chinese government encourages the development and popularization of the Internet and is committed to the opening up of the Internet,” the statement said.
The panel included members of the Senate and House and Obama administration officials. It was chaired by Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, and Representative Sander M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan.
“Information is not to be feared, and ideas are not enemies to be crushed,” Mr. Dorgan said in opening remarks. “The truth is China too often wants a one-way relationship with the world.”
Google’s action angers China, threatens business interests
Although Google’s new unfiltered Hong Kong-based search site had not been fully blocked by the Chinese government by late Tuesday, many experts on both sides of the Pacific expect that to happen. Meanwhile, Google’s deal to be the default search engine on partly state-owned China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile telecommunications carrier, is widely presumed to be at risk. And Tom.com, a Chinese Internet portal owned by a Hong Kong tycoon, by
Tuesday had switched its default search engine from Google to the Chinese Baidu.com, saying it wanted to avoid violating any Chinese laws.Still, even as Google carried through on its two-month-old threat to stop censoring search, the full scope of the government’s response — and the reaction from the Chinese people — was not yet fully clear.
Bill Bishop, whose DigiCha.com blog follows digital media in China, spent Tuesday in Beijing watching state-sponsored TV news blast Google for everything from its lack of respect for Chinese law to its alleged problems serving up Internet porn. “The government has gone into high gear to lambaste Google in the official
media,” Bishop said.
“There are lots of ways to cause Google problems in China,” he said, adding that while he hoped the government would not block Google search from the mainland, “the government can certainly make things difficult for any remaining Google operations or business relationships inside China. I expect them to do so, maybe not this week, but in the not too distant future.”
Bishop said many Chinese would accept without much question the state media’s portrayal of Google’s alleged sins, such as a high government official quoted by the Xinhua News Agency expressing “our discontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conduct,” and its “politicization of commercial issues.” But China’s tech-savvy bloggers were worried the government would block google.com.hk and possibly force the Internet giant to abandon its research and development and advertising operations in China — though there were no signs of that happening Tuesday.
“There’s a rising sense that this is not the right direction for China to go, which is increasing its isolation,” said Santa Clara University professor Anna Han, a specialist in Chinese law who has been monitoring the
online reaction in China since Google’s announcement Monday. “When they mention this, it’s not only Google. It’s Facebook; it’s YouTube. It’s ‘What else is going to be blocked?’ “A few Chinese passers-by laid flowers or chocolates on the large metal “Google” sign outside the company’s office building in northern Beijing. While Google said its Chinese Web search was operating with “no issues” Tuesday, users on the mainland reported that some politically sensitive keyword searches would cause a browser to disconnect from the Web, and in other cases, searchers could not access sites displayed by Google because of government filters. Han said many Chinese bloggers Tuesday were joking about “doing more wall-climbing,” an inside joke about the steps tech-savvy Chinese take to evade the “Great Firewall” of Internet censorship.
Wall Street also appeared to be waiting for the full extent of the government’s response.
“There continues to be a lot of uncertainty about what’s going to happen, and uncertainty is never good from the shareholders’ perspective,” said Ben Schacter, an analyst who follows Google for Broadpoint AmTech, reacting to the China Mobile situation and other questions about Google’s future in China. “That’s one reason you see the stock down today. There’s still the broad questions about what is going to happen to Google in China.”
Google shares dropped by 1.5 percent Tuesday, to $549.00 a share, as Wall Street analysts like Schacter took a wary but measured response to Google’s action. The stock gained back most of that loss in after-hours trading.
Google first said in January that it would no longer comply with government requirements that it censor search, after a cyberattack originating in China targeted its intellectual property and the Gmail accounts of human rights activists.
Google runs a distant second in the Chinese search market to Baidu.com, which has about 60 percent of the market compared with Google’s 35 percent. Similarly, most estimates are that Google’s revenue from China was less than 3 percent of its $23.7 billion in revenue in 2009.
But the future growth potential in China, which now has the world’s largest Internet market, is huge.
“If they were the leading player in search in China, or they were on a really significant growth curve there, there might have been a more negative reaction from Wall Street,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst and principal of Sterling Market Intelligence. “I think people are saying this is not an immediate (financial) impact and the future is uncertain, so we’re not going to punish Google for doing this.”
The Obama administration appeared to take a more measured response Tuesday from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s strongly worded speech in January on Internet freedom, with a State Department spokesman calling Google’s action, “a business decision.”
But State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley also told reporters, “were I China, I would seriously consider the implications when one of the world’s most recognizable institutions has decided that it’s too difficult to do business in China.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact Mike Swift at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/swiftstories.
THE POST AND CURRIER
Don’t do China’s dirty work
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
If you live in China and want to get information from any Internet search engine on the Dalai Lama, you get back the answer, “Problem loading page.” And if you do it often enough, you have to worry that government agents will come by to ask questions of their own.
To save the government the trouble and expense of blocking political and other Web sites it considers bad for the mental health of its citizens, China demands that foreign and domestic Internet companies do the censorship for it. Until Monday, all complied, including such major American providers as Microsoft, Yahoo and Google.
Now Google has said “no.”
Would-be users of Google China are now redirected to the company’s uncensored Hong Kong operation. The immediate consequence, is, however, the same, because the Chinese government has replaced Google China as the censor, and “Problem loading page” is still the answer you get if you type in Dalai Lama, the BBC reports.
But the consequences for Google, its competitors and China itself are striking. Google has scored a big gain with supporters of human rights and earned a valuable public relations advantage over its American competitors who still collaborate with China, as they must if they wish to continue to do business there. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based non-profit promoting free speech, hailed the decision and said other Internet companies should follow Google.
The Chinese government deplored the “politicization” of a “commercial issue” and said Google was “totally wrong.” Some China experts think China will retaliate by blocking all access to Google. In Beijing, the BBC reports, some Chinese laid flowers outside Google’s offices to thank the company for standing up for its principles.
The White House, ever nervous about its relations with Beijing, said it was “disappointed” that China and Google are at an impasse. It should be grateful, instead, that Google has the backbone to refuse to do China’s dirty work.
The fascination Americans naturally have with the dynamic Chinese economy tends to obscure the sobering fact — one that would never be tolerated anywhere in the Western world — that 1.3 billion Chinese suffer the denial of basic human and political rights supposedly guaranteed by their own government.
Google, with its principled and brave stand against Chinese censorship, has given their plight the attention it deserves.
China moves appear to target Google
James Temple, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
The Chinese government appeared to be retaliating against Google Inc. for its decision this week to stop censoring search results in the country’s mainland, further stoking tensions among U.S. businesses already irked by the country’s increasingly bold and nationalistic tactics.
If unchecked, the widely watched episode could tip already fragile trade relations, slowing the expansion of foreign businesses into China and, in turn, checking the nation’s meteoric economic development.
“An issue that has been bubbling under the surface for years has now hit the boiling point,” said Carl Guardino, chief executive of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a trade organization in San Jose. “For the good of the innovation economy and both (countries’) national economies, let’s hope that both sides can step back, cool down and find a workable solution.”
On Monday, Google redirected traffic from its Chinese search engine, Google.cn, to an unfiltered site in Hong Kong, a less-regulated special administrative region of the nation. The move made good on a promise the Mountain View Internet giant made on Jan. 12 to stop censoring search results in China, after revealing that it and dozens of other U.S. businesses were victims of intricate cyberspying that originated there.
Chinese government firewalls quickly disabled searches for controversial topics from the mainland to the Hong Kong site, Google.com.hk, or blocked links to certain results, the New York Times reported Tuesday. Under apparent government pressure, China Mobile, the country’s largest cellular communications company, was expected to remove Google’s search engine from its service, the newspaper said, citing business executives close to industry officials.
Likewise, China Unicom has halted the rollout of a mobile phone that runs on Google’s Android platform while Internet portal Tom.com ceased using Google technology in its search engine.
Skepticism growing
If the actions were in fact all the result of Chinese government prodding, it would fit into a pattern of recent state strategies that have increasingly led foreign companies to question the common wisdom that China is necessary to their growth strategy, said Jock O’Connell of ClarkStreet Group, a Sacramento trade consulting firm.
Key complaints include government policies that increasingly funnel business to state-owned enterprises, force foreign companies to strike joint ventures with local businesses, require access to the companies’ propriety technology and undervalue China’s currency.
“We’ve been hearing these kinds of stories now for some time, and there does seem to be a crescendo of adverse news about companies, particularly high-tech American companies,” O’Connell said. “It’s a very serious situation that’s emerging here.”
Feeling unwelcome
Indeed, 38 percent of foreign firms said they feel increasingly unwelcome in China, up 12 percentage points from a few months earlier, according to a survey released earlier this week by the American Chamber of Commerce in China. The trend was more pronounced among technology companies, with 57 percent saying they were harmed by government policies and 37 percent saying they were losing sales as a result.
Google’s decision marks another in a series of narrowed Chinese ambitions among major U.S. technology companies. In recent years, for instance, both eBay Inc. and Yahoo Inc. handed over control of their operations in the country to local partners.
But some believe the track record to date shows that U.S. companies, on the whole, are more than willing to indulge the Chinese government’s self-censorship demands and stacked rules in exchange for the chance to break into the world’s most populous marketplace.
“Most businesses seem to take the attitude, based on their public pronouncements and actions thus far, that the Chinese government can take advantage of them in any number of ways,” said Alan Tonelson, a research fellow focused on China at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, which represents U.S. manufacturing companies. “They’ve convinced themselves that they’re making so much money now that it’s worth it, or the prospective market is so big that they can’t afford to ignore it.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report. E-mail James Temple at jtemple@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page A – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
FORBES
China, White House Comment on Google Redirecting China Searches
MarketNewsVideo.com , 03.23.10, 01:26 PM EDT
China and the White House responded last night to Googles decision to redirect traffic for its China search site to one based in Hong Kong, to avoid complying with government censorship regulations. Chinas Xinhua news organization reported that an unnamed official called Googles decision totally wrong.
China and the White House responded last night to Googles decision to redirect traffic for its China search site to one based in Hong Kong, to avoid complying with government censorship regulations.
Chinas Xinhua news organization reported that an unnamed official called Googles decision totally wrong.
And the White House, via a spokesman for the National Security Council, said it was disappointed that Google ( GOOG – news - people ) and the Chinese government could not reach an agreements.
Some good news for Google today is that The European Court of Justices ruled it was not liable if sellers of counterfeit goods asked to use brand names in advertising links, as long as it removes the ads if a trademark abuse is recognized.
In reaction to Google redirecting Chinese search to Hong Kong, Goldman Sachs ( GS – news - people ) hiked its price target on Baidu.com , ( BIDU – news - people ) from $575 per share all the way up to $675 per share. Goldman says Baidu could win a third to three-quarters of Google’s China traffic.
What’s behind Google farce
(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-03-22 17:53
Editor’s note
Since Google’s first announcement on Jan 13, 2010, that it was considering retreating from China, it has garnered worldwide attention. Google claimed its decision was a response to the Chinese government’s censorship and hackers’attacks from China. It assumed that the Chinese government would amend its current laws to adapt to the company’s requirements, turning the incident into a farce and resulting in its facing backlash from Chinese users.
As the situation evolved, it was getting clearer that Google was backed by US government and politicians who intended to politicize the economic incident and attack China. While US government increased its pressure on China, a national outrage against US’s finger-pointing spread across China, which backs the government to firmly hold its stance against Google and the US government and any politicians behind it.
Google has made a bad bet against the Chinese government and its netizens. If Google is not willing to comply with Chinese rules, leaving China is the best choice.
China: Google breaks promise, totally wrong to stop censoring
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-03-23 07:30
BEIJING – Google has “violated its written promise” and is “totally wrong” by stopping censoring its Chinese language searching results and blaming China for alleged hacker attacks, a government official said early Tuesday morning.
The official in charge of the Internet bureau under the State Council Information Office made the comments about two hours after the online search service provider announced it has stopped censoring its Chinese-language search engine Google.cn and is redirecting Chinese mainland users to a site in Hong Kong.
“Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks,” said the official.
“This is totally wrong. We’re uncompromisingly opposed to the politicization of commercial issues, and express our discontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conducts,” the official said.
Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond made the “stop censoring” announcement in a blog post at about 3 am Tuesday Beijing Time, more than two months after the company said it had been attacked by hackers supported by the Chinese government and was considering pulling out of the Chinese market.
The Information Office official said relevant departments of the Chinese government talked with Google twice at its requests, on January 29 and February 25 respectively, to hear the company’s real intentions and demonstrate sincerity of the government.
“We made patient and meticulous explanations on the questions Google raised (in the talks), …telling it we would still welcome its operation and development in China if it was willing to abide by Chinese laws, while it would be its own affair if it was determined to withdraw its service,” the official said.
“Foreign companies must abide by Chinese laws and regulations when they operate in China, ” the official added.
Google must follow Chinese rules or leave
By Zhu Yuan ( chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-03-23 09:20
Whether Google is going to withdraw its operation from the Chinese market or not should not be overstated. If this US Internet giant does not want to abide by the rules in China, it is in fact choosing to exit from this market. Its accusation toward the Chinese government of hacking into its website is just an excuse for its final withdrawal.
As we all know, each country has its own rules. There is no such a thing as absolute freedom. This Internet company, with its operation in many countries for many years, should have more than enough knowledge that there can’t be absolute freedom on the Internet, either. There is also no freedom for an Internet company to upload novels without notifying the writers and paying them.
Does Google have such freedom in the United States? It certainly doesn’t. Then why does this company want to have its own way in China? There is no reason for the Chinese government to allow Google to do whatever it wants to do simply because it is an American company.
We Chinese need to have a peaceful mind on this matter. We welcome foreign companies to operate in China as long as they abide by Chinese rules. We are open to negotiations if they have any problems. But we don’t like the way Google has handled its disputes with the Chinese side.
Life will go on whether we have Google or not. China will further open to the outside world and so will the Chinese market. I think Google will be welcomed if it wants to return someday in the future. But China will not give in on a matter of principle: It must abide by Chinese rules when it comes to its business.
Google case will not affect China-US relations
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-03-23 16:43
BEIJING – Google’s withdrawal from the Chinese mainland will not affect China-US relations “unless someone politicizes the issue,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Tuesday.
Qin told a regular press conference the Google issue was a commercial matter and would not damage the image of China.
He said moves to tie the issue to the China-US relations were “making a fuss” and “overstating the issue.”
The Chinese government encouraged and pushed for the openness of Internet and its management according to its laws and regulations, which was common practice in all countries, Qin said.
“What China is striving to prevent on the Internet is the flow of information that would pose a danger to national security and the interests of the society and the public,” he said.
“Any foreign company operating in China must abide by Chinese laws and regulations,” Qin said.
China would stick to the strategy of opening-up and the principle of mutual benefits, and welcome foreign entrepreneurs to invest and do business in China within the law.
“We will create a sound environment for them,” he said.
Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond said his company would “stop censoring” in a blog post at about 3 am Tuesday Beijing Time, more than two months after the company said it had been attacked by hackers operating in China and was reconsidering its approach to China.
Google hits exit key
By Wang Xing and Zhang Haizhou in Beijing, and Guo Jiaxue in Hong Kong (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-24 07:37
Search engine’s departure from the Chinese mainland opens door to rivals. Wang Xing and Zhang Haizhou in Beijing, and Guo Jiaxue in Hong Kong report.
Google Inc took a major step in its row with the Chinese government on Tuesday by redirecting traffic from its Beijing-based search engine to its service in Hong Kong.
The move effectively means the company no longer needs to filter its search results, as required by Chinese law.
Although Google’s exit is good news for its rivals, chiefly Baidu, Sogou and up-and-comer Tencent, many experts said it is a “lose-lose situation” for both China and the US-based company.
The initial reaction from the authorities came via an unnamed State Council information official who told Xinhua News Agency that Google had “violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market (in 2006) by stopping filtering its search service and blaming China, in insinuation, for alleged hacker attacks”.
“This is totally wrong. We’re uncompromisingly opposed to the politicization of commercial issues, and express our discontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conduct,” the official said.
However, just hours later, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang told a regular press briefing that the government would handle the case “according to law”, and that the move was an isolated act by a commercial company and should not affect China-US ties “unless politicized”.
Philip Crowley, a US State Department spokesman, said on Monday it was “a decision for Google to make”.
It is unclear whether the move will go on to impact bilateral ties, while uncertainty also remains on whether Google’s revenue, and that of its Chinese partners, will be affected.
TOM Online, a mainland Internet company run by one of Asia’s richest men, said on Tuesday it has ended its affiliation with Google Inc, after “the expiry of their agreement”.
“TOM reiterated that as a Chinese company, we adhere to rules and regulations in China where we operate our businesses,” said a statement by its parent company, Hong Kong-based TOM Group, which is controlled by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing. The company declined to say when it stopped using Google services or to provide any details
of its agreement with Google. Many of Google’s other Chinese partners, such as free music service Orca Digital, insisted the redirecting of Google.cn and Google.com traffic to its Hong Kong website will have little impact on their partnerships.
“Google.cn is only one gateway so it doesn’t have a significantly impact to us,” said Orca chief executive, Gary Chen, whose firm has received investment from Chinese basketball star Yao Ming. He said his company may keep its partnership with Google through its global website and believes the Chinese government would not oppose that. “I believe they can still find a solution,” he said.
Orca generated 5 million yuan ($730,000) in the fourth quarter of 2009 – most of which came through Google’s advertising platform – and Chen said he expects that figure to double this year despite Google’s closure of its China-based operations.
About 40 percent of Google China’s revenue is generated through its global advertising network, which would not be impacted by the shutdown of Google.cn, according to Edward Yu, president of China-based market research firm Analysys International.
WALL STREET JOURNAL
By JAMES B. STEWART
The Google-China showdown is at hand, and for sheer drama it’s hard to beat.
That any private concern—even the world’s largest Internet search-and-advertising company—would take on the world’s most-populous nation is pretty mind-boggling. Is technology now so powerful that the company can defy the government of one of the world’s most-powerful emerging markets?
Even more broadly, can a government as pervasive and controlling as China’s stop the digital flow of uncensored information and continue to dictate what its population knows and can discover? Is it even in China’s self-interest to do so?
I’d love to be a fly on the wall as Chinese government leaders wrestle with these issues, since the discussion surely represents one of the great debates of our time. But not even Google seems to know exactly what the Chinese authorities are thinking, or even what the terms of the debate are.
Google took the momentous step of closing its Google.cn site this week and rerouting users to its unfiltered Chinese-language Hong Kong site. The move offers the Chinese government a face-saving compromise by enabling it to enforce its restrictive policies on the mainland while allowing a relatively uncensored site in more-liberal Hong Kong. But it isn’t much more than a fig leaf if any Chinese user can simply type in the Hong Kong address and get unfiltered search results, not to mention the competitive advantage Google would gain over Chinese search engines like Baidu that censor results.
So I don’t think China will go along. (Almost immediately, there were indications that China continues to block some search terms or filter sensitive results on the Hong Kong site.) But why doesn’t China use Hong Kong as an experiment in greater digital tolerance? China could block users on the mainland while seeing what happens in Hong Kong. It already allows Twitter and Facebook in Hong Kong, with no evidence of subversive consequences so far. It’s surely in China’s long-term interest to have a better-educated, Google-equipped population.
While investors are waiting for these long-term issues to play out, they need to ponder the implications for Google’s stock, which has dropped more than 10% from its peak this year, in large part over concerns about the China standoff. Investors seem to be assuming the worst, which is that Google will be shut out of one of the world’s largest search markets. That seems the likely outcome, at least in the short term.
But longer term, I believe China’s own self-interest and the forces of technology favor a Google return. Google says it’s maintaining its research-and-development operations in China, which will be essential if it hopes to remain competitive. Google could also show a little more sensitivity towards the Chinese government’s sensibilities and try to avoid making this an issue of American cultural imperialism. Any good news for Google in China will likely give the stock a boost.
More fundamentally, the case for owning Google has never depended on its success in China, in my view. There are plenty of other growth areas for the company, including the U.S. I’m more interested in its market share in search and its revenue growth as the developed world emerges from the financial crisis and advertising spending rebounds. The switch to digital advertising is still in its early stages, and as I see it, Google has only scratched the surface of its potential. As long as these trends remain intact, I’m comfortable owning Google as one of my core holdings.
For anyone seeking an entry point, the recent 10% pullback represents an opportunity. Whatever the eventual outcome, once the China conflict simmers down, investors will again be focusing on the fundamentals. In Google’s case, they remain compelling.
—James B. Stewart, a columnist for SmartMoney magazine and SmartMoney.com, writes weekly about his personal investing strategy. Unlike Dow Jones reporters, he may have positions in the stocks he writes about. For his past columns, see: www.smartmoney.com/commonsense.
Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
WASHINGTON POST
Google’s decision signals change in Western businesses’ approach to China
Google’s action angers China
The Chinese government has condemned Google’s partial retreat from its operations in mainland China. Web users there have been left to wonder whether they’ll still get access to the Internet through Google. (March 23)
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
BEIJING — The showdown between Google and the world’s most populous country marks a turning point in one of the great alliances of the late 20th century — the bond between Western capitalists and Beijing’s authoritarian system.
After Google’s audacious decision to confront China over the issue of censorship, officials here insisted Tuesday that the Internet giant’s case was an isolated one and would not affect China’s opening to the West or its market-oriented reforms.
But Western businesspeople said the episode had underscored a broader sea change in how U.S. and European companies deal with the government here. More specifically, they said, Western businesses have begun to push back openly against China.
In announcing Monday that it would stop censoring results on its Chinese site, Google acknowledged that it was “well aware” that the Beijing government “could at any time block access to our services.” But the company also made clear that such an outcome would be better than having to censor itself any longer.
Although China has not yet taken any draconian action against Google or its employees, it has started censoring results for sensitive searches in China on Google’s Hong Kong-based Web site, where its users on the mainland have been redirected. (Hong Kong users could see uncensored results.)
There were also signs that China wants to punish Google in other ways. On Tuesday, a Hong Kong-based Internet company, TOM Online, announced that it had stopped using Google’s search tools. TOM is owned by the family of Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong’s richest man and a supporter of the Communist government. Meanwhile, analysts said two major state-owned mobile phone companies on the mainland, China Mobile, with 500 million users, and China Unicom, China’s second biggest, were rethinking deals with Google.
Analysts say that China’s willingness to stand up to Western firms is a consequence of its meteoric economic rise. The government doesn’t need Westerners’ investment as much as it once did, and it is increasingly bald-faced about its desire to acquire their technology.
“The Google affair is both catalyst and evidence of change,” said Arthur Kroeber, managing director of Dragonomics, a Beijing-based economics firm. “We are at a turning point. It had been very, very unusual for foreign business to say anything too negative about China because the opportunities here were too large.”
Indeed, for decades, Western businesses have been Beijing’s closest friends. When Congress railed against China over human rights issues and threatened to revoke its most-favored-nation trading status in the 1990s, the American Chamber of Commerce in China and other groups flocked to Washington to state Beijing’s case. The last major Western company to openly confront the Chinese government was Levi Strauss, which withdrew from the country over what it called China’s “pervasive violation of human rights.”
But more recently, Western businesses have begun to voice concerns about their treatment in China. The European Chamber of Commerce has issued reports over the past several years that say China’s business environment is deteriorating. One report accused China of embracing “economic nationalism”; another said China had effectively halted economic reform.
“In 2009, China was one of only two major growth markets in the world, but the door here isn’t opening wider, it’s narrowing,” said the chamber’s president, Joerg Wuttke. “China talks about opening up, but in fact local implementation is not just really bad, it’s worsening.”
Even the American Chamber of Commerce in China, which has long been a friendly venue for the Chinese government, has gotten into the act. On Monday, it issued a report that said business confidence among 203 members surveyed was at its lowest point since polling began four years ago.
And in December, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington took the unprecedented step of organizing a joint letter, signed by 33 business associations from around the world, criticizing China for a plan that would force foreign companies to hand over their prized intellectual property and trademarks to China if they wanted to keep selling goods here.
Joe Studwell, an author who has followed the perils for Western businesses in China for more than a decade, said the change in tone was part of a “new realism” toward China.
Businesses now understand, he said, that the “unspoken arrangement with China is coming unstuck.” China is not opening its markets, nor is it allowing its currency to increase in value, as many had assumed it would.
Relations between China and world’s business leaders, however, are still strong. Among the Fortune 500 companies, 480 have investments in China. There are 660,000 foreign companies represented in the country. Foreign direct investment, after wavering last year during the global financial crisis, seems to have rebounded, with an estimated $7 billion to $8 billion a month flowing into China. With its 8 percent growth rate in 2009 and more of the same predicted for this year, China remains one of the only bright spots in the relatively dim firmament of global business today.
And there are still Western business leaders who put a positive spin on the relationship.
Michael Barbalas, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, said his group’s expanding profile reflects not a souring on China but a realization that political changes have mandated a more boisterous approach.
Ten years ago, for example, China allowed comments on very few, if any, of its laws. Last year it allowed foreign interests to comment on 300 pieces of legislation, he said.
“As China opens up these laws for comment, we found a lot of special interests speaking out,” Barbalas said. “So we had to up our game.”
Chinese officials insist the Google case is unrelated to the broader business climate here. After the Internet giant made its announcement Monday, Microsoft indicated that it would continue to “comply with the laws in every country in which we operate,” disappointing human rights advocates.
In fact, no one expects another Google to confront China soon. But the Internet giant’s willingness to do so is a sign of the times.
Meanwhile, how China treats Google going forward is widely viewed here as a test case. The government could force the firm out of China entirely, or it could allow Google to be a symbol of a new kind of relationship with Western companies — one in which foreigners can do business here without feeling compelled to kowtow to the political system. Many analysts view the latter scenario as highly unlikely.
“Tactically, yelling at Google is unwise,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, a visiting fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Technology Policy. But “how they handle Google is either going to contribute to reassuring foreign companies that you can do business in a rational manner or to convincing them the regulatory environment is so politicized that you have to prove your loyalty.”
“If I were China on this case, I would declare victory,” she added, “and then walk away.”
Staff writer Ellen Nakashima in Washington contributed to this report.
China newspaper accuses Google of helping U.S. intelligence
BEIJING
Wed Mar 24, 2010 1:56am EDT
BEIJING (Reuters) – A Chinese Communist Party newspaper accused Google on Wednesday of colluding with U.S. spies, and said the firm’s retreat from China over censorship justified Beijing’s efforts to promote homegrown technology.
China’s latest blast at the world’s biggest Internet search company came in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the chief newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party.
Google on Monday shut its mainland Chinese-language portal Google.cn and began rerouting searches to a Hong Kong site, over two months after it said it would not accept the self-censorship demanded by China’s government, which is determined to keep a tight grip on domestic users’ access to the Internet.
China’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday it regarded Google’s departure as the “individual act” of one company, and said the country remained welcoming of foreign investors.
But Beijing’s response to Google’s complaints about censorship and hacking has also echoed nationalist-tinged claims that Google and Washington used the dispute over Internet controls to challenge Communist Party authority.
“For Chinese people, Google is not god, and even if it puts on a full-on show about politics and values, it is still not god,” said a front-page commentary in the paper.
“In fact, Google is not a virgin when it comes to values. Its cooperation and collusion with the U.S. intelligence and security agencies is well-known,” said the newspaper.
“All this makes one wonder. Thinking about the United States’ big efforts in recent years to engage in Internet war, perhaps this could be an exploratory pre-dawn battle,” the commentary said of Google’s pull-out.
The overseas edition of the newspaper is a small-circulation offshoot of the main domestic edition, and often makes bolder comments than the main edition.
The commentary said Google’s actions should prompt China to focus more on developing its own technology.
While the tough comments may not reflect official policy, they reflect China’s anger at the United States after recent tensions over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, President Barack Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, and Washington’s calls for Beijing to lift the value of its yuan.
Google “completely misjudged the situation, and does not grasp that Chinese people are extremely averse to external threats and pressure”, said the newspaper commentary.
The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday Google’s decision to shut Google.cn was a business decision by the company and did not involve the U.S. government.
(Editing by Ken Wills)
Stance by China to Limit Google Is Risk by Beijing
Security officers tried to stop people from lighting candles outside Google’s Chinese headquarters in Beijing on Tuesday.
By MICHAEL WINES
BEIJING — This is a nation that builds dams, high-speed rail lines and skyscrapers with abandon. In newly muscular China, sheer force is not just an art, but a bedrock principle of its seemingly unstoppable rise to global prominence.
Who has more to lose in the showdown over Internet censorship?
Now China has tightened its grip on the much more variegated world of online information, effectively forcing Google Inc., the world’s premier information provider, to choose between submitting to Chinese censorship and leaving the world’s largest community of Internet users to its rivals. It chose to leave.
Google’s decision may not cause major problems for China right away, experts said. But in the longer run, they said, China’s intransigent stance on filtering the flow of information within its borders has the potential to weaken its links to the global economy.
It may also sully its image — promoted to its own people as well as to the international community — as an authoritarian country that is economically on the move, perhaps even more so than the sclerotic, democratic West.
“The Chinese are very serious about pushing their soft-power agenda,” Bill Bishop, a Beijing Internet entrepreneur and author of the technology blog Digicha, said Tuesday. “Google just put a big hole in that sales pitch, and I think they know that.”
China’s leaders appear fully aware of their dilemma. But at this stage in China’s history, and given the Communist Party’s determination to maintain absolute rule, they still put political control ahead of all other concerns.
“What does Google’s exit say? What it says publicly is what everyone deeply engaged in China knows privately,” Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a Brookings Institution scholar and former Clinton administration adviser on China, said in an interview.
“This is a system with very substantial domestic imperfections,” Mr. Lieberthal said. “And the view from afar that this is simply an unstoppable juggernaut — that they have found the keys to the magic kingdom — is not correct. China’s leaders understand this as well as anyone.”
The conclusion of Google’s four-year Internet experiment in China — an effort to transplant Western free-speech norms here — was anything but smooth. On Monday, it effectively shut down the search engine it hosted inside China, after declaring in January that it would stop cooperating with Chinese censors.
As Google began redirecting tens of millions of mainland Chinese users early Tuesday, Beijing time, to its Hong Kong-based Web site, google.com.hk, parts of the company’s remaining mainland operations quickly came under pressure from Google’s Chinese partners and from the government itself.
China’s biggest cellular communications company, China Mobile, was widely expected to cancel a deal that had placed Google’s search engine on its mobile Internet home page, used by millions of people daily. One official in China’s media industry said that the company was scrapping the deal under government pressure even though it had no replacement lined up.
Censorship, of course, is not new in China. The government has never released its grip on the information industry, and if anything has steadily tightened supervision of the Chinese Web in the past couple of years. Those restrictions have not noticeably inhibited its economic growth, which remained robust even as the West staggered through its worst recession in decades.
But China also does not acknowledge to its own people that it censors the Internet to exclude a wide range of political and social topics that its leaders believe could lead to instability. It does not release information on the number of censors it employs or the technology it uses for the world’s most sophisticated Internet firewall. Its 350 million Internet users, many with fast broadband connections, are assured they have the same effectively limitless access to information and communications that the rest of the world enjoys.
Google publicly challenged that stance in January, and reinforced its ideological opposition to China’s policies by finally pulling the plug on its mainland search engine after a failed round of talks with Chinese officials. That forced Chinese leaders to defend their control of the Web, which they did partly with an outburst of nationalism and vitriol.
The cost, at least with some influential sectors of its own society, could be steep. In the technology sector, Google is viewed as an innovator that has spurred rapid development of the Chinese Web. Its departure will leave some Chinese companies with greater influence, but could also stifle competition, some fear.
“Google is good at innovation, and when it leaves, the rest of the companies in China will lack motivation. Without its countervailing power, the industry won’t be as healthy,” said Zhang Yunquan, a professor at the Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Fang Xingdong, chief executive of Chinalabs.com, said the vast majority of Chinese Internet companies invested little in research and “simply copy each other’s technology.” With Google’s departure, their profits may rise, but China’s Web space will begin to stagnate, he predicted.
Despite China’s mantra that the Google issue should not be “politicized,” it is, at the end of the day, highly politicized, especially inside China.
Xiao Qiang, founder and editor in chief of China Digital Times, said that China’s leaders once saw the Internet as having both political and commercial uses that balanced each other to a degree. “But increasingly they see it as a political space,” he said.
The implication of that thinking, post-Google, is that companies that want to be major players on the Chinese Web will have to prove their political fealty to the leadership, much as traditional media companies do. “Chinese companies have to be collaborators,” Mr. Xiao said.
One Western official in China said that the leadership is now treating the Internet as a “core interest,” an issue of sovereignty on which Beijing will brook no intervention. The most commonly cited core interests are Taiwan and Tibet, the third-rail issues in China’s international diplomacy.
That could make it even harder for China to negotiate Internet freedom issues with the United States and other nations. In fact, even among those who argue that China will do just fine without Google, China’s battle with the Internet giant is seen as a proxy for its broader confrontation with the West over rights, trade, climate change, and declining American hegemony.
“I believe Google got some support from the U.S. government,” said Yan Xuetong, director of the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University. “This means the American government will adopt a tougher, more aggressive policy toward China.”
David Barboza contributed reporting from Shanghai, and Edward Wong and Jonathan Ansfield from Beijing.
Google Faces Fallout as China Reacts to Site Shift
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
By MIGUEL HELFT and MICHAEL WINES, The New York Times
Google pushed. Now China is pushing back.
The company’s problems in China escalated on Tuesday as its ties to some Chinese partners began to come apart and the government reacted angrily to Google’s attempt to bypass government censors.
Google, the world’s largest Internet company, once viewed China, the world’s largest Internet market, as a bottomless well of opportunity with nearly 400 million Web users, and an even larger number of potential customers for its nascent, but vital, mobile phone business.
But by directing search users in China to its uncensored search engine based in Hong Kong, Google may have jeopardized its long-range plans.
“I don’t understand their calculation,” said J. Stapleton Roy, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “I do not see how Google could have concluded that they could have faced down the Chinese on a domestic censorship issue,” said Mr. Roy, a former United States ambassador to China.
Google called the move sensible and said it hoped to keep its sales, research and other operations in China.
But some of those other businesses quickly came under pressure. China Mobile, the biggest cellular communications company in China and one of Google’s earliest partners in its foray into smartphones, was expected to cancel a deal that had placed Google’s search engine on its mobile Web home page. Millions of people use the page daily. In interviews, business executives close to industry officials said China Mobile was planning to scrap the deal under government pressure, although it had yet to find a replacement.
Similarly, China’s second-largest mobile company, China Unicom, was said by analysts and others to have delayed or scrapped the imminent introduction of a cellphone based on Google’s Android platform. One popular Web portal, Tom.com, already ceased using Google to power its search engine. The company is controlled by Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong billionaire who has close ties to the Chinese government.
Technology analysts and the business executives said Google might also face problems in keeping its advertising sales force, which is crucial to the success of its Chinese language service on PCs and mobile phones.
In an interview on Tuesday, David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, said he did not see the company’s decision to serve Chinese search customers from outside China as an act of defiance. He said the move was consistent with Chinese law and with the company’s goal to stop participating in censorship. While it is possible that Google’s prospects in China could suffer, the company has yet to see any concrete business impact from its decision, he said.
“We certainly expected that if we take a stand around censorship that the government doesn’t like that it would have an impact on our business,” Mr. Drummond said. “We understood that as a possibility.”
But Mr. Drummond said that over time, Google would benefit from taking a principled stand in China and elsewhere. “It is good for our business to push for free expression,” he said.
Several analysts suggested that the government could shut down the company’s Chinese search service entirely by blocking access to Google’s mainland address, google.cn, or to its Hong Kong Web site, google.com.hk, though that had not happened as of Tuesday.
Users who went to google.cn were automatically being sent to google.com.hk. Google’s search engine in Hong Kong provides results in the simplified Chinese characters that mainland Chinese use. Chinese in Hong Kong use the traditional characters, which can contain more strokes and are more difficult to read and write. Government firewalls either disabled searches for highly objectionable terms completely or blocked links to certain results. That had typically been the case before Google’s action, only now millions more visitors were liable to encounter the disrupted access to an uncensored site.
Some China experts say they were perplexed by Google’s handling of the crisis, given its stated goals of keeping business operations in China.
David M. Lampton, director of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said it was not surprising for China to balk at the idea of an American company using Hong Kong, and China’s own “one country, two systems” policy, as a way around censorship.
“That would be seen as fundamentally politically subversive in China,” Mr. Lampton said. “I am not sure whether it was an attempt by Google to give the Chinese a way out, but instead it magnified the political controversy.”
Others said Google’s move also put Chinese authorities in a difficult situation, as the government might be wary of agitating loyal Google users in China, who tend to be highly educated and vocal.
“To block Google entirely is not necessarily a desirable outcome for the government,” said Mark Natkin, managing director of Marbridge Consulting, a technology research firm in Beijing. “It’s going to boil down to whether authorities feel it is acceptable for users to be redirected to that site without having to figure it out themselves.”
The potential loss of cellphone search customers could prove particularly painful over time, analysts say. As on PCs, Google makes money on mobile phones when people click on its ads. If carriers like China Mobile and China Unicom remove Google as their principal mobile search service, it could cut Google’s mobile business.
Also, the spread of Android phones, which is just beginning in China, was meant by Google to ensure the availability of its services like search and maps on smartphones. Yet this month, Motorola replaced Google’s search on Android phones in China with Bing, Microsoft’s rival service, because of the uncertainty surrounding Google’s fate in the country.
Estimates from analysts and some Google insiders put the company’s annual revenue in China at $300 million to $600 million, a small fraction of Google’s nearly $24 billion in annual sales. But investors were counting on that strategically important business to grow rapidly.
“Having that potential is worth quite a bit to investors,” said Ben Schachter, an analyst with Broadpoint AmTech.
Google shares have lost nearly 6 percent of their value since the company said in January that it might pull out of China. During the same period, the Nasdaq 100 index rose by nearly 5 percent.
For his part, Sergey Brin, a Google founder and its president of technology, on Monday held out the possibility that some day Google and China would patch up their differences.
“Perhaps we can return to serving mainland China in the future,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Greens applaud Google over China ruckus
By Trevor Clarke, Computerworld Australia
March 23, 2010 04:51 PM ET
The Greens have welcomed Google’s decision to stop censoring the Internet in China and attempted to tie the issue to Australia’s own ISP-level Internet content filter.
In a statement, Greens Senator Scott said Google’s decision, which came on the back of accusations by the company it had suffered attacks from inside China on the Gmail accounts of human rights activists, was the “first move in acknowledgement of the long-term futility of internet censorship”.
“We commend Google’s initiative, which is quite a contrast to the Rudd government’s meek approach to China,” Ludlam said.
The Greens telecommunications spokesperson described Google’s decision to start [[artnid: 340521 |redirecting users of filtered Google.cn to the company’s Hong Kong search site, Google.com.hk where it provides “uncensored search… specifically designed for users in mainland China” as an opportunity to develop a “more mature relationship” with the key trading partner.
“Google’s move in China has been followed by a highly critical submission on the Australian Government’s own plan to censor the internet, saying parents around Australia have the strong view that ‘the government’s proposal goes too far and would take away their freedom of choice around what information they and their children can access,” he said.
“Abandoning this ridiculous censorship proposal might also give our arguments more weight when trying to redefine our relationship with China.”
Quoting a Chinese official in the Internet section of the State Council Information Office the state news agency, Xinhua said it was “totally wrong” for the search giant to break a written agreement to censor the Internet made when it entered the Chinese market.
“We resolutely oppose the politicization of commercial problems, and express dissatisfaction and indignation toward Google’s unreasonable criticism and actions,” Xinhua paraphrased the official as saying.
Google’s decision came on the same day communications minister, Senator Stephen Conroy released submissions to Government’s proposed measures to increase accountability and transparency for Refused Classification material — in other words the often criticised ISP-level Internet content filter.
For me, Google is a very convenient search engine for maps and academic papers. And if it’s really going to leave China, I will feel very sorry for that. In fact, I think the China government should not be so strict to Google. It’s just a IT company, and it does more good than harm to China.
The internet is an open space, and everybody should have the right to say whatever he or she wants. If most of Google’s contents is true and useful, many people will log on to it, and then it will gain popularity. Conversely, if it’s full of lies, nobody will see its webpage, and it will die out automatically. So there is no need for the governmental scrutiny, just let the netizens to do the choice.
China had tried to seclude itself from the outside world in the Qing dynasty, but failed. Three hundred years later, the action of trying to block the information coming from unorthodox sources, is even more impossible to succeed now.
Google may be a sacrifice of China’s online regulations under strict network safety controls. From this viewpoint, we shall be pity to hear that Google had been forced to move from China mainland to Hongkong no matter self decisions or not. But anyone who will conclude that Hongkong is not a part of China is very ironical, we can just say these persons lack at least a little common sense of international politics, it is not a must to debate about such stupid or malicious newspaper reports. Chinese people can have their own considerations on Google’s move, but as well, we can still use Google search engine, the situation just proves to be a compromise and balance between the two. Any more comments about this may be complexed with sensitive feelings.
Google is one of my favorite search engines, because it provides me the most useful information and the most objective opinion of all the recent events. However, Google has moved to Hong Kong. I have a proverb to express my disappointment, that nothing right is left and nothing left is right. At least, I feel uncomfortable when I need the professional material to write my paper. So, I am so sorry of the disappearance of Google.cn, and I have to get used to this situation.
Google has left the Chinese mainland. I personally think that we should not complicate the issue. In the world, every country has its own particular circumstances. China is a socialist country. In order to safeguard the national ideology security, Chinese government must take certain measures. Google cannot meet these requirements, they believe that it is contrary to the company cultural traditions, so they leave Beijing, and moved to Hong Kong. Of course, this event is worth our consideration. I believe that China will be increasingly open, and in the near future, Google will again move to Beijing.
After read all the articles above, I feel sorry about the case. We should admit that Google is one of the best search engines in world and is convenient for us to use. When I heard the news that Google will go out of China I was a little sad about that. I was afraid that I can not use it any more. I have read some news about the issue. After I knew the reason why Google want to move I supported China. In my opinion, Google has no right to interference China’s policy. Every country has their principal. Google as a company the commitment of it is to supply the best service and satisfy the customers. It moved from Beijing to Hongkong now and Hongkong is also a part of China.
I use Baidu to search for Chinese information, but when I want to search for some English information, like news about NBA stars, I prefer Google. And the Google video search is better than Baidu because they divide all the videos into several kinds. Many friends around me like the Google Earth very much and often use it. I don’t think Google is leaving China because we can still use the google.com.hk. There are not too many differences if you don’t break the GFW. Many people said that Google quit the Chinese market for sensationalization. But I don’t think so. As my opinion, Google has its own principle, and that’s its choice.
As everybody knows that Google is the best search company in the world and have excellent employee with best science and technology in the circle of net economy. Of course, I like to use Google for learning the news happened lately around the world and entertainment about movie and music .When I heard that Google left Chinese mainland for HK which is also a necessary part of China. We also know the fact everyone should obey the rules when he take part in the games. All in all, we can change what we want to change and accept what we can not change in the complex world.
I really surprised to find that I have not recognized my rights were infringed when I was blocked from some Internet sites connected with Dali Lama or Taiwan issues. Maybe we are all used to behave normally under the dictatorship rule and automatically accept the fact that we have only one way to get information from outside the world. So when getting the information Google would leave China, I had little idea why Google did such an unusual action for all the Internet companies in China were under the same censorship. Now, I hold the idea that Google left mainland China not just only because the restriction of China government, while I also admire its courage to propose this issue.
I rarely use the Google search engine, so the google issue seems to have little effect on me. But I am very concerned about this matter and regret that Google have left the Chinese mainland. It may cause Google and the market of China in a lose-lose situation, but for Google, the loss must be greater. Experts say, Google announced its withdrawal from China, so as to pressure the Chinese government to abolish or change the censorship regulations.In my opinion, this is an unwise practice.Google should be reminded that, regardless of moving to Hong Kong or elsewhere, it must follow the law there.
Google is the search engine of choice for me . I am sorry for its decision to leave Chinese mainland. As the largest Internet search engine, google shoud’t give up the market of China and try to keep the balance between freedom and censorship . Even though now the profit from China only takes up 3% of the total profit, the potential market is very large in future.. As an international company , Google should obey the laws of other countries. I know some firms from USA obey domestic law but break law in China. It’s the duty of all international companies to do business under the local laws.
I have to admit that there are strict censorship in China. We can’t go to some foreign websites such as Facebook. It is a pity that many people have no access to learn of different opinions from foreigners. All of the above could hinder the social progress .
Believe it or not, Google is the best Search Engine in the world. I was shocked by the news that Google stopped censoring and moved from Beijing to Hong Kong. I am familiar with Google because I use Google search engine to find English definition and academic papers.
But I don’t feel pity for Google because I insist on that Google must follow Chinese rules. Local culture or law is important in business world during globalization. If we do not pay attention to this, it may lead to substantial losses. So global culture should merge with local culture.
How will life be different after Google’s leaving from China mainland?
Nothing would change as per myself since I rely on another search engine- Baidu. Actually Baidu has a much larger market share than Google in China also its service is more suitable for Chinese Internet users. So no matter what is the key factor that made Google withdraw from China, it was a totally loser when exiting. However, I think it’s my freedom and citizen right to access the information in internet fairly and the censorship is no ground to stand.
Google and Baidu are two search engines I can’t live without. I use both of them everyday. When I want to know the meaning of the popular words around me, or some solutions of some small problems I had in my daily life, I ask Baidu to tell me. When I want to find papers for my research, know the meaning of English words, read the news of the world, I select Google as my first choice. But if I have only one choice between the two, undoubtedly I will choose Google. The news of Google leaving China was a surprise to everyone. And then we know that it only left the mainland China, not the country. How tricky! Some may say that China should be shamed of this because Google told the whold world that there’s no free media in China. However, considering China’s specific situation, I find the internet rules are somewhat acceptable, though there’s much space for improvement. It’s China, not the USA. This country is still developing and lots of things should be improved in the future. If Google wants to do business with China, it has to learn how to live on this land.
I argue that China doesn’t have to worry about the Google’s withdrawing from the mainland market, I think, the Google needs China much more than China needs Google.
First, I think Google is not a product or service that is irreplaceable. In China we have other internet search engine. And Chinese use other search engine more than Google.
China has the largest population in the world. So does the potential of the Chinese market. If China’s domestic market is fully exploited, we’ll have the largest market in the world. In the past, we paid to much attention to the foreign market. After the global financial crisis, the demand of the foreign country suddenly shrinks. So the export-oriented companies in China especially in Guangdong province have been stricken so seriously. So it is the suitable and inevitable time for the Chinese government to reconsider our strategy of developing the country’s economy. At present we should try our best to develop and cultivate the domestic market. Depending largely on other country’s market is not a proper way to develop the economy continually. Developing and cultivating the domestic market will not only rescue the China’s economy from the recession, but also the world’s economy from the finance crisis.
Because of the rapid growth of China’s economy and the huge domestic of China, the withdrawing of any foreign company from China will not contribute to the uneasiness of Chinese.
Google has left Chinese mainland, I am sorry to hear that. Google is one of my favorite search engines, it is very convenient. But I think that Google decided to leave Chinese mainland based entirely on its own interests. It is not a political issue, it is just a business decision.
In this age of change, the human society is progressing rapidly on various fronts. And internet is playing increasingly important roles in the contemporary society and the reporting of current affairs are exerting profound impact on modern life. It is apparent that there is a host of up-to –day entertaining and newsworthy information which help people know about the world better. What’s more, it is time-saving for them to read news on internet. And after comparing news reporting by different news outlets, people may know which is media hype while some others are objective and balance, and finally it enable them to learn the truth. In other word, people have the right to know the truth, which cannot deprive by others, never, ever. Therefore, in order to encourage the development of our society, it is sensible to preserve the right.
It’s really complicated that everyone insists their own opinion, Google think it’s a dirty work on doing the censorship for China government and China government announce that Google is totally wrong to stop censoring. In my opinion, I do think it is a little exaggerating by saying that “1.3 billion Chinese suffer the denial of basic human and political rights supposedly guaranteed by their own government”, but I admit that we have a long distance to reach the west world’s level in human rights.
All the games have their own rules. If you can not comply with it, then you’d better go away. Chinese Internet also has its rule. The rule of filtering the Internet had existed before GOOGLE decided to enter the Chinese market. After compete and work hard for several years, the GOOGLE’s market share is also small. He finds that he is not a patch on the domestic search engine—BAIDU. And then one day he stood out saying the practice was hindering international trade, and blamed how chaotic it is for Internet companies in China. It is so ridiculous. So just withdraw from China, never come back. I though Google is a company on the cutting edge of the world. But now, it cannot acquire my respect.
I have heard a version of Google exiting mainland China; that’s all about profit. I don’t know whether there are reasons besides the company’s economic interest, such as political considerations. I do believe Google’s retreat to Hong Kong is the result of low market share in mainland and lack of profitability; they just cannot beat Baidu. Remember, the two companies were competing in 100% identical environment before.
Well, for netizen like us, Google depart from mainland is not a good news, because we will have fewer choices of searching engines. However, as long as Google could function well in Hong Kong, we can still enjoy the service.
Once the CEO of baidu said, within five years, Google will be out of Chinese market. Now it is gradually verified. In our country especially sensitive to politics, any words inclined to anti-government will be eliminated by the network administer. Any company who do not obey the rules will refer to Google, who now act like a warrior who don’t submit himself to the Chinese government and keep his dignity worthy respectful? Since we Chinese people keep our words sometimes don’t mean we know nothing. The stability the government wants to maintain is understandable and to lead people into a rich life is one way they can get more support.
In my opinion, Google`s behavior is just a business decision, we do not need to collect it with politics. China is an old country and also a developing country. There is a long time to open enough to other countries. Foreign companies should abide by China`s laws if they want to operate in China. At the same time, Chinese companies should also follow other countries laws if they do business with other countries. In modern times, we need co-operation, but not the counterwork..
The conflict between China’s government and Google has been existed for a long time, now Google has moved out of the mainland of China, it moved into Hongkong. What I want to talk about is: does Google really want to give up the large profit it has earned from China? No, it doesn’t. When the day Google moved out of the mainland of China, I was worried about whether I could use it anymore, when I came back to my dormitary, I found it unnecessary. We can use Google as usual; nothing has changed except the domain name. Does Google really want to move out from China? No, it doesn’t! Google never give up its benefit from China.
I’m using Google Chrome now and I have to say it’s really convenient. What I have seen about Google in recent 3 or 4 months make me very upset. I think deeply and come to a conclusion that it’s Google itself, not the hackers and partly the government, directs the whole scene.
Google’s history in China provides me more details about its mistakes, most of which are in its marketing policy. All it did in these 4 years is ignoring the common internet users in China. Google knows almost nothing about the demand of this huge group, as well as their ways of thinking and doing things. So it is doomed to be the market-loser, naturally.
But I still believe Google is the best in the world, and they will succeed if they can confront the facts and make changes.
Google and Chinese government are more boyfriend and girlfriend. At first Google has the stomach for Chinese government’s unreasonable demand. When it is too much to bear, Google break up with Chinese government and fall in love with china’s daughter. It humiliate Chinese mainland and move Chinese government to review themselves. The Chinese government severely restrict the freedom of Network for just the lack of confidence of Chinese government and the Chinese government worry about the threat to their domination of freedom but how to peacefully transfer to a democratic and free society, it’s a question.
That Google left China is just a business act. When it can’t obey the authority’s rules, the only way is to go home. It is the choice that Google make. I don’t like the west to make it politicalize.
In my personal opinion, baidu.com is better than google.com in China, although Google is the best Search Engine in the world. I think Baidu.com is supported by China government, so its net speed and convenience is better than Google in educational network. Therefore, I have been used to searching by baidu.com. Maybe Google.com moves to HK are just a business strategy. China’s online regulations and strict network safety controls may be not reasonable, but we have also been used to living in such a country. By the way, the video is always unavailable.
There are two main searching engines in China, Baidu and Google. The former has a much larger market, but I prefer the latter one, for it is more international and provides more information. Baidu biddably obeys the rule of government, Google did less, more less now. Google used to obey the rules, that is, censoring the searched results, but why it stops right now? I think there are two main reasons. First, the control on Internet from Chinese government is out of Google`s patience. As a freedom advocated internet company, Google strongly stands up to the control to show its belief and set an example to counterparties, even to the world. Here comes the second, U.S government may support after Google. Even a huge MNC, Google don`t want to lose the tremendous profits from China, unless some demands from government. Actually, we can see the ambiguous relations between Google and the government. Secretary Hillary just gave some criticism on the Chinese Internet freedom before Google`s protest.
Will Google`s switch to Hongkong work? I don`t think so. Surely, we can now search out more threads after Google`s stop of censor, but all the sensitive webs can not be logged in. what`s more, there are many ways to affect Google`s operation, slow down the rate of opening its website, for example, which can effectively affect consumer`s preference on Google. As a result, Google will lose more users.
I can’t agree the China’s censoring on the Internet, which I think is an unwise and rude action. I still believe that the people have authority on getting information they need on web. The government cannot intervene. It is terrible that the youth could simply learn things that are allowed to be told; while, sometimes, the truth would be missed, and then sunk. Maybe someone says that the people would be misled by the wrong information. However, the government should know that people have their own judgment on everything if they get the fact.
Google’s decision is wise. Leaving is the best way to insist on its own value, although its business interests were threatened. In addition, I don’t think that the Google’s would harm the relationship between China and the US. The US government would not place any unreasonable regulation on a commercial company.
Google has decided to leave China, that’s a disappointing news for us, especially those who has used to looking for the useful news with the Google search engineer. The officials said that the Google didn’t operate in accordance with the local laws, however the Google’s spokesman said the Chinese government restricted the company’s freedom, the conflict ends by Google’s leaving China, that is not what we expect, I think the officials of our country give unaffordable pressure to us, prevent us from visiting foreign websites. We can’t log on many of the foreign websites, such as FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE, that can’t resolve the conflict between China and west countries. We need to change our attitude! If we want to get enough respect from others, the prior thing we should do is to move away the obstacle which hinder our mutual understanding.
Google and Baidu are two search engines I can’t live without. I use both of them everyday. When I want to know the meaning of the popular words around me, or some solutions of some small problem I had in my daily life, I ask Baidu to tell me. When I want to find papers for my research, know the meaning of English words, read the news of the world, I select Google as my first choice. But if I have only one choice between the two, undoubtedly I will choose Google. The news of Google leaving China was a surprise to everyone. And then we know that it only left the mainland China, not the country. How tricky! Some may say that China should be shamed of this because Google told the world there’s no free media in China. However, considering China’s specific condition, I find the internet rules are somewhat acceptable, though there’s much space for improvement. It’s China, not the USA. This country is still developing and lots of things should be improved in the future. If Google wants to do business with China, it has to learn how to live on this land.
Google shut down all the servers in mainland and declare to leave “China” is reasonable but stupid. Obviously the Internet environment in china is not as free and open as the government said, however to quit is not a smart choice.
China, which is the country has the most netizens in the world, makes it a very huge market. There are two main search engines in china, one is Baidu and the other is Google. Objectively compared to Google, Baidu has a long way to go in searching technique, but for some culture and business reason, Baidu take a considerable lead in China. The profit in Google China only takes 2% in all, and what’s more some of its service like Pasca and Blog are forbidden here. So that is why Google can give up the market here. What Google should do now is like a loser, find an excuse to quit. If google really want to protect its belief, it should hold its ground in China and boost it, let the Chinese netizens have more chance to know the world outside.