In the wake of Google lifting censorship of its content generation in China, the Chinese authorities have hit back, calling the search engine marketing leader ”totally wrong”, violating its promise to adhere to Chinese rules and regulations.
Google has begun to deflect users in China to the unrestricted Hong Kong site, despite the fact that Chinese firewalls cause search results to come back censored.
BBC News reports that Google lifting censorship is a major blow to the Chinese as it shows that they are no longer willing to work with the communist government, describing it as denting China’s ”international image.”
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson released a statement saying that the ”politicisation” of such commercial issues will not affect China/US relations, saying the government would deal with Google ”according to the law.”
Meanwhile, a Chinese IT expert, Chen Yafei, was cited in Reuters as saying: ”Any company entering China should abide by Chinese laws… Google has its own credos, the fighting between Google and China is their own business.”
He added, ”Chinese internet users will have no regrets if Google withdraws.”
It seems however, that there will be some sadness, as wreaths and chocolates have already been laid on the Google plaque outside its Beijing offices.
Rebecca MacKinnon, Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Centre, was quick to condemn such censorship in her blog, cited in The Telegraph. MacKinnon says ”The longer this high profile fracas goes on, the greater Chinese internet users awareness will be about the lengths to which their government goes to blinker their knowledge of the world.”
It remains unclear whether China will take any other action to limit Google hosted search engines outside of the mainland.
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