by Wang Zhicheng

At 3 am, Google removed censorship filters on its Chinese operations, redirecting traffic to Hong Kong. China accuses the company of breaking its promise. The future is uncertain since Google cannot afford to lose the huge Chinese market, and Chinese authorities cannot afford uncensored information. Chinese net users want the government to say what content it wants censored; they also want Google to say how much censorship it practiced after it entered the Chinese market.

Beijing (AsiaNews) – Early this morning shortly after Google announced it would stop censoring search results in mainland China, Beijing issued a press statement, saying that the internet giant’s decision was "totally wrong.” By removing censorship filters on its search engines and blaming China for alleged hacker attacks, “Google has violated the written promise it made on entering the Chinese market”.

At about 3 am Tuesday (Beijing Time), Google said it would stop censoring its Chinese-language search engine google.cn, redirecting all Chinese mainland users to a site in Hong Kong.

Now, users can search information about democracy, the Tiananmen massacre, the Dalai Lama, religious freedom, and more.

On the company’s official blog, Google's chief legal officer David Drummond said, “”[W]e are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese. Specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong”, this “is a sensible solution” that is “entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China.”

China’s row with Google began on 12 January when the US-based company announced it had been the victim of a cyber attack that originated inside China aimed at the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. Since then, it has threatened to remove filters on its search engines that the Chinese government had imposed when it entered the Chinese market in 2006.

Now everyone’s attention is turning to the future. In China, many are certain that Beijing will never accept uncensored information to flow freely within the country and that sooner or later it will block Google.

As for Google, its short-term prospects will not be dented by shutting down its Chinese operations, which are responsible, at most, for 2 per cent of its revenues. However, because of the size and growth rate of China's internet population, any loss of business there is likely to harm Google's future growth prospects.

Within China, some netizens are really put off by the idea of losing Google forever; others, more nationalistic, think the US company should just obey Chinese laws.

Nevertheless, pressures from foreign and local companies might yet shake up Beijing’s sophisticated web monitoring and censoring system.

In fact, despite their official anti-Google stance, Chinese authorities are still wary about upsetting the business world too much. This morning, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said that the controversy would not affect China-US relations.

At the same time, “An Open Letter to the Chinese Government and Google Inc” began circulating online on Sunday, expressing the frustration many internet users feel about being left in the dark on the matter.

The open letter raises several questions about what content the Chinese government required Google to self-censor. It also wants to know more about Google’s business operations in China, in particular concerning the company’s “tacit understanding” with Beijing in censoring Chinese cyberspace.

Quickly, the letter was re-posted more than a thousand times on blog and micro-blogging platforms before it was censored.

• china
• hong
• kong
• google
• censorship
• open
• letter
• redirected
• traffic
• promise