SAN FRANCISCO/BEIJING: Google’s threat to quit China over censorship and hacking intensified Sino-US frictions on Wednesday as Washington said it had serious concerns and demanded an explanation from Beijing.
China has not made any significant comment since Google, the world’s top search engine, said it will not abide by censorship and may shut its Chinese-language google.cn website because of attacks from China on human rights activists using its Gmail service and on dozens of companies, including Adobe Systems.
Chinese authorities were “seeking more information on Google’s statement,” the Xinhua news agency reported in English, citing an unnamed official from China’s State Council Information Office, the government arm of the country’s propaganda system.
Friction over the Internet now seems sure to stoke tensions between the United States and China, joining friction over climate change, trade, human rights and military ambition. With China the largest lender to the United States, holding $800 billion in Treasury bills, these Internet tensions will make steering this vast, fast-evolving relationship all the more tricky, especially with the US Congress in an election year.
China has said it does not sponsor hacking. Pressing China for an explanation, US Secretary of State Clinton said: “The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy. “We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns,” Clinton said in Honolulu. Chinese industry analysts said the issue had snowballed beyond Google and its problems.
Tensions over Internet: China’s policy of filtering and restricting access to Web sites has been a frequent source of tension with the United States and tech companies, such as Google and Yahoo Inc.
Google’s announcement suggested the recent intrusions were more than isolated hacker attacks. “These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered — combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the Web — have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China,” Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond said in a statement posted on the company’s blog. Some 20 other companies also were attacked by unknown assailants based in China, said Google.
RBC Capital Markets analyst Stephen Ju said the move was a turnaround for Google. “Just about every earnings call recently has been that they are focused on the long-term growth opportunities for China and that they are committed.” Shares of Google dipped 1.3 percent although an executive described China as “immaterial” to its finances. Shares in Baidu, Google’s main rival in China, surged seven percent.
A Google spokesperson said the company was investigating the attack and would not say whether the company believed Chinese authorities were involved. US President Barack Obama, during a visit to China in November, told an online town hall that he was “a big supporter of non-censorship.
After the Google announcement, searches on its google.cn search engine turned up images and sites previously blocked, including pictures from the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing. reuters
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