China Issues Another Warning to Google on Enforced Censorship of the Internet

By Michael Wines | The New York Times
12 March 2010

One of China's top Internet regulators warned bluntly on Friday that any move by Google to stop censoring its Chinese search engine would be "irresponsible" and would draw a response from Beijing.

The statement by Li Yizhong, China's minister of industry and information technology, followed a statement on Wednesday by Google's chief executive officer, Eric Schmidt, that "something will happen soon" in the two-month standoff over Internet censorship between his company and the Chinese government.

But it was no more clear on Friday what that something might be than it was two months ago, when Google executives first threatened to pull out of China unless the government stopped forcing it to censor the results of users' Internet searches.

Chinese journalists outside Google's Beijing offices on Friday said they had heard the company was planning to close its doors here. But a Google spokeswoman denied that in an article on Thursday in the government-run English-language newspaper, China Daily.

Google's China businesses "are still at normal," and rumors that the company had ordered its Chinese advertising agencies to cease work were not true, the spokeswoman, Marsha Wang, told the newspaper. At Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., another spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker, declined to comment on the statements from Mr. Li or any other aspect of its dispute with China.

A company spokesperson said Wednesday that Google expected the dispute to be settled "in weeks, not months."

Speaking on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, China's party-controlled legislature, Mr. Li said that he hoped for an amicable resolution to the standoff. But he gave no indication that the government would ease the censorship rules that are at the heart of Google's ultimatum.

"I hope Google will abide by Chinese laws and regulations," The Associated Press quoted Mr. Li as saying. But "if you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to bear the consequences."

Whether the company chooses to remain in China, he added, will be up to Google.

Since it opened shop in China four years ago, Google has captured roughly 30 percent of the search market in the world's largest assemblage of Internet users, and it is a favorite among the better-educated and wealthier classes that advertisers covet. But the company has long been uncomfortable with Chinese demands that it censor search results to prevent users from viewing some kinds of content, notably political matters that the government deems unacceptable.

Google's Chinese Web site does censor some of its content, but its restrictions are generally less onerous than elsewhere, and the censored items are clearly identified as having been banned by the authorities.

>> Complete Report