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Analysis: Google Self-Censorship Escalates China Internet Debate

Posted on: Wednesday, 25 January 2006, 09:00 CST

Editorial analysis by Peter Feuilherade of BBC Monitoring Media Services on 25 January

The leading internet company Google intends to censor some of its content in China in order to gain greater access to the country's huge and fast-growing market of 111 million web surfers.

Although Google has offered a Chinese-language version of its search engine for years, users have had to put up with government blocks on the site.

Now Google is to set up a new site - Google.cn - which it will censor itself to satisfy the authorities in Beijing.

Critics fear the self-censored version could restrict access to thousands of sensitive terms and websites. But the Silicon Valley- based web search leader argued that it would be more damaging to pull out of China altogether.

Several of Google's international rivals, among them Yahoo and Microsoft, also obey censorship rules set out by the Chinese government and block searches on sensitive information. Last year Yahoo was accused of supplying data to China that was used as evidence to jail a Chinese journalist for 10 years.

And the government itself maintains tight control over the internet and what users can access. Human rights groups note that in recent years, China has jailed dozens of dissidents who have published political criticism on the web.

Google's "only option"

Google argues that a restricted search engine is the only way it can offer any meaningful service to Chinese web users, as a fuller one would be blocked anyway.

"While removing search results is inconsistent with Google's mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission," a Google statement said.

The company hopes its new address will make searches easier and quicker. Its e-mail, chatroom and blogging services will not be available because of concerns that the government could demand users' personal information.

Google's senior policy adviser, Andrew McLaughlin, said its Chinese users would be told that information was being held back.

"We think that by being very careful about which services we're putting into China, for example we're not putting our email service, our group service, our blogger service, on to Google.cn, and by providing disclosure when things have been removed from the search engine, that we will be overall able to provide more tools, more access to more information," McLaughlin said in remarks quoted by the BBC.

Self-censorship "hypocrisy" - watchdog

A survey in August 2005 revealed Google was losing ground in China to a Beijing-based rival web search company, Baidu.com.

According to Rebecca McKinnon, of the Harvard Law School Centre on Internet and Society, Google's motive now is to secure its share of the world's second-largest internet market.

"They've certainly taken a step away from their motto, which is 'Don't be evil.' What's interesting is that they seem to have revised their motto to 'Don't be any more evil than necessary.'," McKinnon commented.

Google's move to avoid confrontation in China came less than a week after it resisted efforts by the US Department of Justice to make it disclose data on what people were searching for, global media freedom groups recalled.

The Paris-based organization Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) on 25 January accused Google of "hypocrisy" for its self-censorship plans.

"The firm defends the rights of US internet users before the US government but fails to defend its Chinese users against theirs. Google's statements about respecting online privacy are the height of hypocrisy in view of its strategy in China. Like its competitors, the company says it has no choice and must obey Chinese laws, but this is a tired argument. Freedom of expression isn't a minor principle that can be pushed aside when dealing with a dictatorship," the RSF statement added.

Political sensitivity

The furore over Google's decision to self-censor illustrates the enormous capacity of the internet to bring about change in China.

A BBC correspondent, Jill McGivering, said the debate rekindled wider questions about China's development, and the dilemma faced by the West when that development is on terms it struggles to accept.

"The internet has brought an expansion of knowledge and self- expression - and, as a result, a level of personal empowerment that was hard to imagine two decades ago. But the nature of the change is symptomatic of change in general in China. It's rapid, largely positive, on an extraordinary scale but also constrained when it comes to politics. The new openness comes to an abrupt halt when it hits issues of greatest political sensitivity for the authorities. They see that constraint as necessary in the struggle to maintain political control over their vast, rapidly changing country," McGivering commented.

Source: BBC Monitoring Media

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