Google vs China - Part 3

Google says "NO MORE!" to the Chinese government

It seems it all lays down to this: by April the 10th, Google.cn will most likely be closed, and Beijing Google headquarters certainly moved to Hong Kong. This also means people left without job and many more without a hope and the future prospects brought into the country by this giant. Right or wrong move, Google has decided to do something new in the Chinese world of today


By ROXANA CIUPARIU (roxana.ciupariu@wavemagazine.net)
from Bucharest, ROMANIA


Google expressed its desire to redraw from the Chinese internet system ever since January 2010, but now this is really happening. The withdrawal consists in moving its offices from Beijing to the more liberal Hong Kong and the closure of Google.cn. It started when people from China typed www.google.com.cn and were redirected to www.google.com.hk, which led to questions and suppositions about the closure of the first one. This whole decision sparked comments from faithful users, human rights activists and companies whose advertisements benefited from deals with Google. But, the choice of Hong Kong is simple and quite efficient: being a special administrative region of China (it has a different economical and political system), former colony of the British Empire and one of the biggest financial centres in the world, it enjoys certain liberties compared to the rest of the country, while still located on Chinese soil. Hence, its setting and status allow Google to both stop censoring itself while not abandoning totally its Chinese users.

The Final Straw

The co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin, decided it would be a better idea to redraw from the Chinese market to a freer place, such as Hong Kong, although not abandoning China definitely, as some feared. Google does not want to disappoint Chinese users and human rights fighters in China and not only, therefore it will still serve Chinese users, but in a different way.





As stated in Spiegel online, during an interview with Mr. Brin, this is a big step, making Google the first major company to challenge the Chinese government in such a way. Compromise and censorship was accepted so far, as Mr. Brin declares, only with the hope of a change for better in the future. Nonetheless, if the censorship was accepted at the beginning with the purpose of entering the market and then hoping for a shift in good, after the Olympics in Beijing things have not only not changed, but went for the worse as well. Moreover, everything changed with the attacks at the beginning of 2010, of which some were directed towards human rights activists. It was this action that sparked controversy over the involvement of the Chinese government.

It appears that, as an official of the American government declared in mid-March, the main responsible for the hacking attacks on Google China is the Chinese government itself. It might have been Chinese hackers, but the reasoning behind the attacks was tended by the government of the People's Republic of China. The whole purpose was to steal technology and corporatist secrets.

So far the official Chinese response was a denouncement of Google-USA ties, stating that Google provides valuable information about the Chinese society to USA, while also trying to replace the traditional values with imposed foreign ones. However, censorship, as a form of unofficial answer is maintained. Wall Street Journal let its users know that the incapacity to access google.cn in the last days of March was not due to Google's failure to add certain parameters as to avoid restriction, but a presumably a blockade from the part of the Chinese government.

How did it get here?

After the hacking of its website and the attacks on Google users' mails, in the beginning of 2010, Google decided to stop censuring its results, while also trying to reach an agreement with the Chinese government. Following the discussions on the repercussions of its acts both in fronts of Chinese law and before its users at the beginning of March, Google was no longer censoring its results. In the same time, it was still trying to reach some agreement with the Chinese government, because, as Google stated previously, it does not want to leave China. The arguments in favour of this decision are falling into two categories: morally-related and economically-related ones. On one side there is the desire to stay alongside people who still want to fight for full freedom of speech, alongside its regular users, who are not few as a matter of fact. On the other hand, China is a big market, which means that leaving it might damage the economical balance of the giant company.

However, even if little is considered better than nothing, especially by those who still want Google in China, there is apparently no going back now. It seems it all lays down to this: by April the 10th, Google.cn will most likely be closed, and Beijing Google headquarters certainly moved to Hong Kong. This also means people left without job and many more without a hope and the future prospects brought into the country by this giant. Right or wrong move, Google has decided to do something new in the Chinese world of today: take a stand and say "NO MORE!" to the government.



(Published: 10.04.2010.)