China attacks Google for lifting censorship
China condemns Google for its decision to lift internet censorship by shutting its mainland Chinese website and rerouting searches to Hong Kong.
China said the Google was “totally wrong” in its decision to close its China-based search service adding that the internet giant had “violated the written promise it made on entering the Chinese market.”
Google said it intends to continue research and development in China, as well as maintain sales staff, even after closing google.cn and rerouting traffic to the unfiltered search site in Hong Kong.
The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said today that the dispute was an isolated act that should not affect China-US relations “unless politicised” by others.
The decision follows heightened tensions between Google and China in a dispute that has been escalating since the beginning of the year. In January Google declared that it would stop censoring search results in response to what it said was a sophisticated cyber attack against its users which it traced to China.
“Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on google.cn has been hard,” Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond wrote in a blog post yesterday.
“We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement,” he said.
The rerouting of search queries to google.com.hk is unlikely to make much difference unless they can get around government-imposed firewalls that block searches for sensitive topics like the Dalai Lama and Tiananmen Square massacre.
China censors the internet by requiring domestic operators to use filters to screen out banned images and words, and also operates a firewall, known as the “great firewall of China”, to block users trying to access overseas websites that are deemed unacceptable.
Search results for sensitive words or topics such as Dalai Lama or Tiananmen Square massacre are blocked. Google’s Hong Kong site, google.com.hk, is uncensored due to the state being a special administrative region under the “one country, two systems” principle.
The White House said it was disappointed that Google and the Chinese government were unable to reach an agreement that would allow the internet company to continue operating the search service.
Mike Hammer, spokesman for President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, said the United States opposes censorship and is committed to internet freedom, but stressed that the White House did not anticipate this issue would cloud relations between the two nations in other areas.