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Steven Schwankert - Feb 2, 2010 1:48 pm UTC

Google's announcement that it was considering pulling out of China was a shocker. Never before had any major US corporation considered closing its operations in China altogether, and certainly not for reasons unrelated to revenue.

Those living in the US have no doubt heard the accusations by Google and the concern of the State Department—but the debate has played out quite differently in the Chinese media and among Chinese citizens. We asked China-based journalist Steven Schwankert to give us the Chinese perspective on censorship, Google, and the US call for more "Internet freedom."

On January 12, Google said on its corporate blog that it was considering its options after discovering cyber attacks against it that had resulted in the theft of Google intellectual property. The post said that the company believed the attacks originated from China and had also targeted the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, who were not named.

The Chinese government has vehemently denied any involvement in the attacks. The government's ire increased when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined the fray on January 21, with her speech on Internet freedom. Ironically, considering the topic and China's repeated claims to run an "open" Internet, the link to the US State Department speech transcript is blocked in China, although the State Dept.'s website itself is not.

The government and its state-run media have been more aggressive in the reaction to Clinton than in addressing Google directly. China's Ministry of Commerce said at a press conference on January 15 that it had not received any notification of Google's complaints or impending withdrawal from China, and added blandly that all "foreign-funded enterprises should respect the host country's laws and regulations."

Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister He Yafei said on January 21 that "people should not read too much into the 'Google incident.'" He said that "Google and other foreign enterprises operating in China face problems [which] should be resolved through Chinese law and courts, and that the Chinese government is willing to help them solve these problems. The 'Google incident' should not be linked to the two governments and bilateral ties."

Both he and the Ministry of Commerce's remarks are Chinese government boilerplate responses.

The Chinese press has been slightly less restrained in its handling of the issue, but it too has focused not on Google but on what is perceived as US "information imperialism."

That phrase has appeared in several articles, including a January 25 article in the Chinese edition of Global Times, one of the country's more nationalist newspapers. That piece suggested that "Obama and Hillary (as the Secretary of State is known, to distinguish her from her former president husband of the same surname) risk the backing of the world."

"Whether Democrats or Republicans, American foreign policy has long had a tendency to make a particular group or country a target," it added. It said that "for China, [Clinton's speech] amounted to 'information imperialism,' a huge gap between the two sides in different values and political systems."

The country's English-language media has maintained a full-court press, with articles about alleged US hypocrisy popping up daily. The January 28 China Daily included the article "US duplicity in Internet freedom."

"The US is not advocating Internet freedom, but just US interests," it said. Chinese media also gave prominent coverage to Bill Gates' statement that restrictions in China were "very limited."

China routinely refers to its Internet access as "open," despite being one of the most closely monitored and heavily regulated in the world. Blocking of access to foreign websites began in 1996. The first to be walled off were Western news sites like NYTimes.com and CNN.com, those supporting independence movements in Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang, and those trafficking in brand-name pornography (like Playboy.com).

Blockings are now more sophisticated. For example, some pornography sites are blocked, but a Google Image search that seems to be revealing too much skin will see most or all of the image results coming up blank. Google News can be reached easily, and some news searches are allowed. However, many searches involving the word "China" will display results—but not permit access to them directly.

China's blocking strategy has moved away from news sites and now more directly targets social networking sites. Facebook and Twitter are blocked for their ability to organize groups with anti-government intentions. Google's YouTube is also unavailable; the site was blocked in March 2009, when video of anti-Chinese riots in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa appeared on the site. Leading Chinese video sites Youku.com and Tudou.com actively monitor submissions and delete those that they consider inappropriate or in violation of Chinese law.

Unlike most markets, where Google is dominant, it has always trailed in China. Competitor and search engine market leader Baidu launched in 2000. Although the Google.com site was available earlier in China, with searching in Chinese supported since September 2000, Google's Chinese-language site did not launch until 2006.

That launch took Google into treacherous waters. In order to launch Google.cn, a China-based, Chinese-language interface, it agreed to censor its search results, a move that led many to question whether the company was violating one of its own mottos: "Don't be evil."

Even the launch of the Chinese-language site did not close the gap between Baidu and Google significantly, though. Baidu has around 60 percent market share; Google, around 30 percent.

Google.com and Google.cn both offer Chinese-language results to queries in Chinese. However, although a China-based user of Google.com may see controversial results regarding topics like the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, access to those links may be blocked by Chinese filtering software and firewalls. Google.cn users would likely not, at least not prior to Google's January 12 announcement, even see those results. Google.cn's servers are based in China.

"Baidu leveraged Chinese netizens' natural propensity to share and create content and seamlessly integrated it in to the overall search experience way before Google's attempts," said Sam Flemming, founder and chairman of CIC, an Internet word-of-mouth monitoring and consulting firm based in Shanghai.

Lost in the shuffle of the US-China, Google-China conflict is the end user in China, as it usually is in any discussion of Internet freedom here. What will the impact of these disputes be for Chinese users, and what do they think?

Although the filtering policy has critics both in China and abroad, how much those debates ultimately affect the average user is questionable. The vast majority of China's 400 million Internet users will turn to Youku.com or Tudou.com for video content, not YouTube. They'll turn to Taobao.com for online commerce, although Amazon does have a presence here via its Amazon.cn site.

For search, there's Baidu. Sina, Sohu, and Netease emerged in the 1990s as China's top portal sites and have never looked back. The trio are still the top online news sources for Chinese users.

Opinions of a possible Google departure ranged from apathy to regret.

"I don't think they'll really leave," said Cici Deng, who runs a travel agency in Beijing. "I use Baidu more, but not exclusively. I use them for different things." Deng said she prefers Baidu for news, Google for pure search.

"I don't really care. It doesn't bother me. I use both, but if Google leaves, whatever," said Sherry Qiu, an ad sales manager for a Beijing-based Internet company.

"It's really a shame if Google leaves. We won't have any choice then," said Vivian Hu, a magazine editor.

"I use Google.com, and I like it much better," said Molly Li, who works for a European technology company. Because she searches often in both Chinese and English, sticking with Google makes more sense rather than switching back and forth with Baidu.

China's blogosphere has been particularly active in taking on the issue. Blogger Hong Bo, better known as Keso, one of China's most popular IT bloggers, displays the phrase "F--- the GFW [Great Firewall]" prominently on his blog. On January 13, he wrote an impassioned assessment of what a Google withdrawal would mean to him.

"For me, this is a painful choice. For most of my online life, I rely on Google. I use Google search, Gmail e-mail, I use Google Reader to read the content of a large number of subscriptions, and use Google Docs to handle all office document processing, photos on Picasa, and geo-tagging… for all of these, I do not have any alternative third-party tools," he said. "Not to mention that there are a large number of Chinese enterprises, such as Alibaba, that rely on Google's search and advertising for global marketing.

"YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, WordPress, Google…the world's best sites and services, one by one removed from China, this may be our generation's greatest tragedy for the Chinese people."

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