Google to say ‘enough is enough’ in China
Google appears to be finally flexing its muscles in China. The search engine giant announced, through a prepared statement this week, that it plans to stop censoring the Chinese version of its search engine and may pull out of China altogether. As well as criticising the Government’s stance on censorship, the statement also mentioned that the company had uncovered cyber attacks on itself and other foreign companies emanating from China on a huge scale.
The reaction within China has been profound. Many of the search engine’s estimated 40 million users even going so far as to leave flowers as tributes at the gates of Google’s Chinese headquarters. One Chinese student even calling the prospect of a Google pull-out ‘a tragedy’. It’s not hard to see why the reaction has been so great, Google’s market share has been growing steadily in China over the last few years, doubling their market share to 35.6%. Whilst that still leaves them a distant second behind home grown outfit, Baidu (58.4%) it’s still incredibly significant in a country as isolated from the west as China.
The Chinese government’s response couldn’t be more different from that of the nation’s people. The government have so far not only refused to make any meaningful statement, they have, in fact, taken steps to down play and even hide the news from the Chinese people. The state-run Chinese news agency, Xinhua initially offered only limited coverage of the story and seemed to be actively soft-pedalling what would ordinarily be a lead story.
Google’s perceived unwillingness to stand up to the Chinese government on the subject of censorship has been a bone of some contention amongst opponents of the Chinese government and freedom of speech advocates, therefore this week’s developments have been met with a broadly positive response from the left of the political spectrum. US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton even went on record to praise the company, or rather criticise the Chinese regime – “[Google’s allegations] raise very serious concerns and questions… The ability to operate with confidence in cyber space is critical.”
It’s hard to overstate the significance of this move from Google, if they were to pull out of China it would leave Chinese internet in the grips of a practical monopoly and potentially scupper hundreds of business ventures and partnerships either with or relying on Google. More importantly probably, it would leave the Chinese people even more isolated from the rest of the world than they currently are, with even less access to the facts than they currently have.
The Wall Street journal has a quote from a concerned Chinese citizen named Ms Xu that sums the situation up perfectly.
“Our postings on the Internet are deleted by [other] Web sites, or when we upload pictures showing bad things on the street, they are deleted … I don’t know what to do without Google,”
It’s likely that the threat to withdraw from China is just Google’s attempt to press the Chinese government into allowing them some measure of free speech through the search results they provide. For the Chinese people’s sake, let’s hope that’s the case.
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