Chinese Government: Google Totally Wrong

The Chinese government Tuesday criticized Google for being “totally wrong” by stopping censoring its Chinese-language search results, while reaffirming that the foreign investment environment will not be affected in China, a ready made reaction after two months of tension sparked by the search engine’s pullout threat.

Surveys showed that the majority of China’s Web users is not much affected by Google’s decision to reroute searches to its Hong Kong-based site.

Analysts said Google’s withdrawal shows that the Chinese government has successfully defended itseflf in an ideological battle, adding that the company’s business is sure to suffer a blow.

Google’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, made an announcement in a blog post at about 3 am Tuesday (Beijing time), saying that the company had stopped censoring its search services – Google Search, Google News and Google Images – on Google.cn, and the company was redirecting Chinese mainland users to its uncensored site in Hong Kong.

The announcement came two months after Google’s revelation of coordinated cyber attacks on the Gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents. The company said the attacks originated in China, without giving specific evidence.

Speculation of its threatened pullout lasted the past two months, with information ping-ponging back and forth.

Beijing reacted two hours after Google moved to cease censoring search results, accusing it of violating a written promise it made when it opened its Chinese search engine in 2006.

“This is totally wrong. We’re uncompromisingly opposed to the politicization of commercial issues, and express our discontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conduct,” an official in charge of the Internet Bureau of the State Council Information Office (SCIO) said in a statement carried by the official Xinhua News Agency.

The White House, which had backed Google in its dispute, expressed “disappointment” Tuesday that an American company felt compelled to take this step, noting that the White House was informed of it before the company made its announcement to the public.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said at a regular press conference Tuesday that the Google case would not affect China-US relations “unless someone politicizes the issue.”

Jin Canrong, vice director of the School of International Studies at Renmin University of China, said the withdrawal was a profit-driven show, in which Google went after bigger business profits by closing its services on the Chinese mainland, which was not profitable, in exchange for boosting its reputation.

While Google is the world’s top search engine, it held only an estimated 36 percent share of China’s search market in 2009, compared with home-grown rival Baidu’s 60 percent.

“The spat was also a display of an ideological clash between China and the West. China would not allow complete Internet openness, which is in line with the country’s national policy. Google has little knowledge of and respect for China on that,” Jin said.

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