China Fires Back At Google Over Censorship Issue
Chinese officials are firing back in its ongoing battle with Google, claiming that the search engine will have to "face the consequences" if it begins offering uncensored search engine results.
In comments made on Friday, Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong told reporters, "We support (Google) to expand its business and market share in China." However, he added, "If you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to pay the consequences" when asked what the country’s reaction would be should Google cease filtering results on its website.
In January, Google announced that they would no longer censor search engine results for the 380-million plus Chinese Internet users they service. That stance was reiterated earlier in the week by the company’s vice president and deputy general counsel Nicole Wong, who on Wednesday told the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, "Google is firm in its decision that it will stop censoring our search results for China" and added that they would cease operations there if no other recourse could be found.
The relationship between the two parties has long been a tenuous one. In December 2009 and January of this year, Google suffered a series of attacks that targeted their source code and the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Those attacks may have come from the Chinese government, claims US-China Economic and Security Review Commission member Larry Wortzel, who said he had "very little doubt" that Beijing officials were behind the hacking attempt.
Google and Chinese officials are currently in negotiations, trying to find a middle ground, but Li is confident that the loss of Google.cn would not be a crippling blow to the country’s online presence.
"If it decides not to withdraw and stay in China, we will welcome it and it will benefit China’s Internet development," he told the AFP on March 12, "[but] if it decides to leave… China’s Internet market will continue to develop fast and will not be impacted too much."
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