China Hits Back At Google

sopssa writes "After Google yesterday started redirecting google.cn users to their uncensored Hong Kong-based google.com.hk servers, the Chinese government has now hit back at Google by restricting access to Google's Hong Kong servers. 'On Tuesday mainland China users could not see uncensored Hong Kong-based content after the government either disabled certain searches or blocked links to results.' China Mobile, the largest wireless carrier in the country, has also been approached by the Chinese government to cancel a contract with Google about having google.cn on their mobile home page for search. China Unicom, the second largest carrier in China, has also either postponed or killed the launch of Android-based mobile phones in the country."

Comments

OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

WHY are there NO comments for this yet?!??!

Re:OMG

[_merlin]

OK, here are your standard template responses:

• OMFG China is evil for censoring your internet!
• Google should GTFO China if they don't want to follow the law!
• China needs Google more than Google needs China.
• The Chinese government is doing more harm than good with this isolationist policy.

Re:OMG

[toastar]

Thanks for doing the work for me!

OMFG China is evil for censoring your internet!

Re:OMG

[NotBornYesterday]

I don't think you've been paying attention to our news and politics lately. Criticizing the government has almost replaced baseball as our national pastime. Of course, the reason it has become so popular probably has to do with the fact that we can do it without getting arrested and interned in a re-education facility. Unlike in, say, China.

Re:OMG

[VanGarrett]

Yeah? So? My country has a bigger dick than your country.

Are you talking about this?

Re:OMG

[the gnat]

Nice strawman. Slashdot is full of left-libertarian US citizens, and we've been wailing about our less enlightened national policies for years. I for one would love to see Dick Cheney sharing a jail cell with Hu Jintao and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but every time one of the latter two gentleman is a topic of discussion, I always see dozens of comments saying "what about Guantanamo Bay/Abu Grahib/warrantless wiretapping blah blah blah?" - as if that excuses any amount of misbehavior by other governments. Well, I think we should withdraw all our troops from foreign countries, try or release everyone at Guantanamo, and send the entire Bush administration to the ICC. Do I have your permission to criticize the Chinese government now, or are you going to start whining about something else?

Besides all that, the simple fact is that the US legal system continues to be more permissive of unbridled free speech than almost any other country in the world. We send people to jail for all sorts of stupid reasons that I certainly don't support, but you can march through Washington DC with a sign comparing Obama to Hitler, and mutter about a 2nd American Revolution, and you won't be hauled off to jail. Most of us wouldn't have it any other way.

Re:OMG

[ScrewMaster]

h. Those that live in the US will be quick to point out the heinousness of Chinese policy, but very slow to recognize anything untoward in their own country's policies, foreign or domestic. Way too much Kool-Aid.

Nice attempt at the appearance of "balanced viewpoint", but it seems like you are either a. ignorant of the United States and its people, b. just America-bashing for the fun of it or (and this is my personal favorite) c. just ignorant. Either way, you're the one sucking down the Kool-Aid. As it happens, a lot of us are pretty damned dissatisfied with our various forms of government here, and we're pretty damn vocal about it. We can talk about it on public forms like this one. We can call the President of the United States a porchmonkey if we want to, and nobody will arrest us (although some of our neighbors might burn down our house.) We can even, if we get sufficiently worked up about it, change how our government(s) operate. It's not easy, to be sure, but is still a lot more than anyone living in China (or any other totalitarian regime) can say for themselves. So watch your tongue.

And we have every right to point out the heinousness of Chinese policy because it is heinous. Whether or not you like the United States doesn't change that fact one little bit.

Re:OMG

[ScrewMaster]

No, your government just bombs the fuck out of countries that disagree with them...

Only if they have something we want, just like every major power since the Roman Empire has done, all throughout history. We don't agree with North Korea, for example ... they don't have a single goddamn thing we want, but do keep making threatening noises about nuking our allies, so we keep buying them off with free food and diesel fuel. So we don't bomb other nations just because they disagree with us: fact is, most of the world is full of complete assholes who disagree with us, and while actually do have enough bombs to take care of them all, there wouldn't be much left when we finished the job.

Re:OMG

[ScrewMaster]

I know I learned it at my public high school.

Oh, he learned it. It's just that irrational finger-pointing at the U.S. has apparently replaced the national sport of many countries. That's too bad ... there's plenty of legitimate criticisms to make.

Re:OMG

[Hal_Porter]

The thing you've got to bear in mind is that China is developing. Back in 1989 China was much poorer and peoples lives were much more controlled - to the point where the government told them where to live and where to work. Essentially it was sort of like North Korea. Then Tiananmen happened. The government basically won that round but they were seriously rattled. They decided on a policy of economic reform but kept the politics unchanged. Now I suspect that most Chinese people saw development as a priority. China quickly became capitalist. It's still rather poor - GDP per capita is between Albania and Turkemenistan. Still the state's strict control over the economy has largely gone. They can afford computers and can get on the internet. Chinese netizens have had regular skirmishes with the government, e.g. Grass Mud Horse.

More seriously there growing numbers of mass incidents, the PRC term for riots usually ones against corrupt local officials. Plus there's a good chance that rapid growth driven by exports might slow if America stops importing. And in any case 1989 is not the only outbreak of anti government activity - there was the Beijing Spring and pretty much total anarchy during the Cultural Revolution.

It's also interesting that the Beijing Spring happened in 1977 after Mao died. There was a second Beijing Spring in 1997 after Deng Xiaoping died - the China Democracy Party was founded and allowed to register by some local authorities until the central government banned it and rounded up the members.

Now Hu Jin Tao is about to retire. Essentially China is due for a political crisis. While it is inevitable that the Chinese government will try and slam the door, it's not completely guaranteed that they will succeed.

Re:OMG

[icebraining]

You better check again the provenience of each component of your computer. Odds are at least one of them was made in China.

Re:OMG

[the gnat]

But in the European Union you can do that, and you are protected with medical care to boot. Your way is not the only way, even with the many good things you can do.

What's your point? I would never claim that the US government is anything close to a perfect system; the debate is about free speech and laws restricting to it. And while I think the EU is mostly very good on civil liberties and better than us on some other unrelated issues, it's worth mentioning that they are far more willing to restrict speech - and I'm not just talking about Germany's prohibitions on Holocaust denial. Google "Ireland blasphemy" if you're curious. On the moral scale, this can't compare to the thousands of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it's one instance where the US clearly is superior.

Re:OMG

[radtea]

We can even, if we get sufficiently worked up about it, change how our government(s) operate.

Almost certainly false. You can't even muster up a viable third party, something your neighbours to the north have been doing with clockwork regularity every thirty years or so for the past century.

The American system of government is broken. Congress has approval ratings that regularly dip below 20% and sometimes into the single digits, but incumbents are returned over 80%, sometimes over 90%, of the time. That is the reality of your broken governmental system. You can SAY anything you damned well please, so long as (a very few of) you vote for one of two almost identical parties.

The only reason the anti-conservative radicals of the Republican Party and the sometime budget-balancers of the Democratic Party look so completely different to you is that they are the only two tiny bumps on the otherwise atomically smooth surface of mainstream American politics. You have a populace so politically naive that a set of minor tweaks to your broken for-profit health care system is considered "socialism", for heavens sake!

All of which said: obvious the US is in pretty much infinitely better shape, culturally and politically, than China, who are shooting themselves in the foot with this ridiculous policy. The Chinese people need access to information to prosper, and by attempting to restrict it the Chinese government is in epic fail territory.

Re:OMG

[amRadioHed]

The American system of government is broken. Congress has approval ratings that regularly dip below 20% and sometimes into the single digits, but incumbents are returned over 80%, sometimes over 90%, of the time.

The American voting system is completely broken, but that example you give has nothing to do with it.

As a whole Congressional approval is always low because no one likes those 98 senators and 434 representatives wasting our money on pork-barrel projects in their districts. But what we do like are those 2 senators and 1 representative bringing money and jobs to our district, thus individually they tend to have high approval and are easily reelected. That's one of the few parts of our system that actually makes sense.

Re:OMG

[mjwx]

So, how are those free speech zones going.

and I'm not just talking about Germany's prohibitions on Holocaust denial. Google "Ireland blasphemy" if you're curious

Nice straw man, but these laws aren't really enacted (Downfall, the source of the angry Hitler videos broke all the German taboo's and with near universal accolades in Germany, also the angry Hitler video's are quite popular with ze Germans). Same with Ireland, when was the last person charged with blasphemy (HINT: Ireland is holding a referendum to have it removed from their constitution). The only difference between saying something immensely stupid in Europe and saying something immensely stupid in America is the American police wont take you to safety before some redneck takes it upon himself to correct your thinking.

The US has as many restrictions on free speech as Europe, they are just enforced differently.

Ping Pong

[WrongSizeGlass]

Google, it's your turn ...

This will end when Google is completely blocked (or 'filtered') by China. I really don't see any other outcome. China will never budge on these issues (at least not in my lifetime) and Google has already burned some of its bridges to China.

Re:Ping Pong

[Monkeedude1212]

This should have been the way its done all along!

If the Chinese government wants to filter the internet, the onus should be on the Government, not the corporations. They've already built their great firewall - why is that not working fine enough?

Seriously, Google has to alter the way it serves up web pages? Thats like re-programming the entire application! Why not have China Filter everything that goes out and comes in, and if its not to their liking - its their own problem? And if Google doesn't like it - then they shouldn't be there.

Re:Ping Pong

[MakinBacon]

They've already built their great firewall - why is that not working fine enough?

Apparently the Great Firewall of China is as effective at keeping out Google as the Great Wall of China is at keeping out Mongolians.

ZING!

Re:Ping Pong

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As any Slashdot Libertarian will tell you, corporations are more efficient than governments(and this is often true, though neither so often nor so dramatically as the Slashdot Libertarians would have it).

And that, in short, is why clever governments tend to try to shift much of the implementation work on to the corporations. China may be ostensibly communist; but they aren't morons, and they follow this pattern. To a nontrivial extent, the greatest triumph of the "Great Firewall" is not the ability to block content(at which it is rather mediocre); but the ability to block particular companies. User studies consistently show that even minor inconveniences(delays of a few seconds, little site usability glitches, and the like) deter consumers on the web. Being put on the "Great Firewall"'s hit list would definitely qualify as an inconvenience to any web-based business. Nice site you have there, wouldn't want anything to umm, come between, you and your customers...

That's the real trick. If you have leverage over the companies, they will be oh so careful to toe the line(and if the line isn't clear, they'll just toe extra carefully). The "Great Firewall" gives leverage over web-based companies. Wireless telcomms are, presumably, beholden for spectrum and tower siting permissions, and they know it(presumably, there are fat state and military comms contracts, as well).

If you try to emulate the East German model of "Hey, let's have something like half the population working, at least informally, for state intelligence" you'll spend so much of your GDP on guns that your people will run out of butter and turn the guns on you. That just doesn't work all that well, medium to long term. However, if you create a system where there is real money to be made, just by following a few little political rules, suddenly the profit-seekers will go from being your enemies to being your hatchetmen. Any successful police state will work in this fashion(or be literally starving and falling apart, I'm looking at your DPRK..)

Re:Ping Pong

[Bugamn]

Let's get it banned in USA too. SEX

Re:Ping Pong

[Anonymous Coward]

US internet censorship is very minor: DMCA violations, child-porn, and libel.

China censors: Tibetan and Taiwanese websites, any police brutality, Tiananmen Square protests, freedom of speech, pornography, international news sources, religious movements, personal blogging websites... and has imprisoned many people over violations.

Comparing US censorship to Chinese censorship is ridiculous.

Re:Ping Pong

[Thinboy00]

Google doesn't want to provoke China to take its employees hostage or something.

Re:Ping Pong

[Eponymous Coward]

So, Google should try to make the American standard the global standard? Since they are an American company, that may make sense.

The reality is that if Google wants to participate in a market, they have to play by the rules of that market.

In the case of China, they don't like the rules any more and since they can't get them changed, they are effectively leaving the market.

Yahoo and Microsoft have been pretty quiet about this. It's too bad they aren't will to take a stand.

Re:Ping Pong

[TheRaven64]

As any Slashdot Libertarian will tell you, corporations are more efficient than governments(and this is often true, though neither so often nor so dramatically as the Slashdot Libertarians would have it).

It's true pretty much all of the time. The problem that the libertarians miss is that the interests of the corporation align with those of the population very rarely. Somehow, it's not particularly reassuring when you are being exploited to know that the exploitation is happening very efficiently. Someone working inefficiently on your behalf is usually better than someone working efficiently against you.

Re:Ping Pong

[the gnat]

is censoring their search engine according to US laws different from censoring according to Chinese laws?

It depends: what does China not censor that the US does?

I'd say that the key difference is that in the US, criticism of the government, exposure of official misdeeds, and calls for regime change are not suppressed, which is why I still see members of the Revolutionary Communist Party passing out pamphlets calling for violent revolution, and why Rick Perry can talk about Texas seceding from the US. The government may outlaw child porn and make copyright law increasingly onerous, but it doesn't try to use censorship to protect its own position. In China, on the other hand. . . well, I'll just quote a section of their criminal code:

Whoever incites others by spreading rumors or slanders or any other means to subvert the State power or overthrow the socialist system shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than five years, criminal detention, public surveillance or deprivation of political rights; and the ringleaders and the others who commit major crimes shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than five years.

I'm sure you can find some equally brain-dead sections of US legal code, but the only thing even close to this in intent would be direct threats against the life of the president.

Re:Ping Pong

[Reservoir Penguin]

As stated by various UN declaration most of the World ,at least in theory, believes in certain universal rights, which is a PC way to state that there are moral absolutes above any national laws. We believe the the right to free speech is absolute, hell if you believe that Democracy is an absolute right then you can just says that since PRC government was not democratically elected then all the laws it enacted are illegitimate.
Now I hold no illusions that all the nations that matter will unite to boycott PRC economically. But it is still possible to be a moral man in the immoral world. I have found out that I can often replace household goods from China with EU made ones which are only marginally more expensive. P.S. The other real problem of course is the apathy of 300-400 million Chinese who profited economically in the last 20 years under the current regime's economic policies. If there will a revolution it will be led by the other 1 billion angry peasants and I doubt that they will demanding democracy, human rights and free market. More like take by force anything valuable from fat city dwellers and redistribute it among the poor.

Re:Ping Pong

[the gnat]

In every Administration there are stories that newspapers sit on for years at a time because the Feds ask them not to publish, and some that never get made public. Then there are the "official" misdeeds we'll never know about thanks to a veil of National Security keeping out the public and the media.

Agreed, but this is a separate issue - there is still no legal action that the government can take to prevent publication, and not much they can do after the fact. The New York Times sat on the NSA warrantless surveilance story for a year because the Bush administration asked them too, not because the secret police held a gun to Bill Keller's head. When they finally published it, the administration and its supporters were livid - I remember seeing many of the more enthusiastic right-wing bloggers demanding treason trials for the reporters and editors involved. Yet no legal action was taken; Bill Keller is still in charge, and James Risen published his book. This is because we have several decades of legal precedent (starting with the Pentagon Papers, if not earlier) that not only is prior restraint unconstitutional, reporters can't be penalized for publishing classified information because they weren't legally bound to protect it in the first place.

The only situations I've seen where the government was allowed to censor third-party publications have been books or articles by former spies, where the appropriate agency (usually the CIA) has redacted some information. I think this is usually ass-covering for the author (and perhaps publisher), since they may be liable for revealing classified secrets that they learned as part of their job.

I certainly agree that our government errs strongly on the side of too much secrecy, but my original point stands - these issues only concern what information the government (and media) is obliged to reveal, not what it can suppress through criminal prosecution.

Re:Ping Pong

[radtea]

The government may outlaw child porn and make copyright law increasingly onerous, but it doesn't try to use censorship to protect its own position. In China, on the other hand. . . well, I'll just quote a section of their criminal code:

The difference being that the Chinese system is incredibly fragile. It is unable to withstand the utterly devastating assault of one lone individual saying, "Hey, I think our government is doing something really stupid. This is why..."

The American system, despite being utterly broken in almost every important respect, is more than comfortable with that kind of critique.

Really, it comes down to a measure of how robustly powerful the Anglo-European system of democratic government is compared to every other model, particularly the delicate and flimsy Chinese model, which apparently needs draconian laws to protected it from the dangerous scourge of... bloggers!

It would be dead funny, if those Chinese Communist losers didn't actually kill innocent Chinese people who want nothing but to have their voices heard as one amongst many in the true song of Chinese democracy.

Re:Ping Pong

[Corbets]

The problem that the libertarians miss is that the interests of the corporation align with those of the population very rarely. Somehow, it's not particularly reassuring when you are being exploited to know that the exploitation is happening very efficiently.

Err, that's different from government how? Most of what my elected politicians due is not to my benefit; they pander to the masses in order to get reelected and maintain their positions of power. Whether that happens to mean signing into law a construction project that no one except the workers needs, or just plain lying about something, it really doesn't align with my interests.

Re:Ping Pong

[the gnat]

Funny - you should try talking to some members of the Revolutionary Communist Party about how hard they have had to work to be able to pass out newspapers and how many of their membership have been shut up in the process. You'd be surprised how many of them are still living underground hiding from the government here.

sigh. . .

I'm familiar with Chairman Bob's histrionics, and I don't believe a single fucking word of it. We see this all the time coming from armchair revolutionaries, okay? Lyndon LaRouche is a particularly notorious case; I'm not sure if there's any part of the US (or British!) government that he hasn't claimed is out to destroy him. No one is stopping the RCP from - for instance - setting up a large display in the middle of UC Berkeley campus explaining how the Cultural Revolution was actually really awesome, and how the counter-revolutionaries had it coming anyway. Dude, I could seriously walk over there and buy one of their newspapers tomorrow. The police, who have much more serious villainy to deal with, leave them alone as long as they don't try to incite riots that result in property destruction.

It's sort of the price you pay for living in the Bay Area - we get beautiful scenery, temperate climate, liberal social atmosphere, and we also get California government and some of the most obnoxious, self-righteous far-left remnants in the country. They're clinging to a glorious past that never really existed, and dreaming of unleashing yet another massive bloodletting, and they're desperately, futilely trying to convince everyone else that they still matter - and they don't. I grit my teeth and bear it, because, after all, at least they haven't started any wars recently, and it seems churlish to get upset about these fools when Dick Cheney is still enjoying his retirement.

Re:Ping Pong

[mjwx]

It's true pretty much all of the time.

No, I'd barely even say it's true half the time.

The thing libertarians and just about everyone else misses is, as long as a corporation is making money a great deal of inefficiency goes unnoticed. No one cares as the bottom line looks good. Seeing as Government services are about the "service" not the "bottom line" they always get noticed for any inefficiency. Corporate efficiency is only looked at when a corporation is losing money (including share price). Take the US health care system, insurance companies are making money hand over fist but the process is so bureaucratic and inefficient.

As ScrewMaster said, smart governments move to a corporate management model for services to get rid of the bureaucracy but maintain the government ownership (taxpayer funded) keeping emphasis on service provision not the bottom line (hence it's a corporation that is always losing money). It's called corpoatisation.

Re:Ping Pong

[col. Fudge]

I'm sure you can find some equally brain-dead sections of US legal code, but the only thing even close to this in intent would be direct threats against the life of the president.

Being from outside the US I've always found it interesting that the position of the president is held in such regard. In a sense you argued against yourself by in this last statement. Why should the penalties for conspiring to murder the president be any different than conspiring to murder your neighbour. I agree the president's job is likely more important than your neighbours, unless your neighbour is about to find a cure for cancer, but is the president's life any more important?

The fact that the president is idolized is not that different than what the Chinese do with respect to the State. I've always found it interesting that I've never heard anyone argue about the view of american president's.

And let the war begin

[courteaudotbiz]

This war could be really hard. But in the end, it's the Chinese people who lose, not Google nor the Chinese "government".

Re:And let the war begin

[confused one]

If I were a Google exec in China, I'd be worried about being formally charged with violating local (Chinese) laws.

Re:And let the war begin

[confused one]

Some of the execs are likely to be Chinese nationals.

Re:And let the war begin

[Toze]

I remember when reading cyberpunk novels felt like escapism.

:T

Re:And let the war begin

[troll -1]

This war could be really hard. But in the end, it's the Chinese people who lose, not Google nor the Chinese "government".

In historical context the Chinese people are currently relative winners.

China has a long history of extremely violent and bloody revolutions. The relative political stability of the past 60 years is pretty much unprecedented. If the past is any indication, the transformation to complete freedom in China is not likely to go as peacefully as it did with the Soviet Union.

Sudden change in China usually results in the deaths of millions. They have little history of peaceful change. The government has an obligation to tread cautiously.

Re:And let the war begin

[shutdown -p now]

It didn't go peacefully in the USSR, either. For one thing, you might have noticed that there's no such country, anymore. And then there were:

Sumgait massacre
War in Nagorno-Karabakh
War in South Ossetia
War in Abkhazia
War in Transnistria
Civil war in Tajikistan
and many more.

War in Chechnya is also, to large extent, a legacy of the Soviet collapse.

Re:And let the war begin

[tokenshi]

Wong wong wong... I mean wrong.

China had a republic for a few years after the end of the Qing dynasty (1912-1949 to be exact.) Had they stayed with it, this conversation probably would not even be happening right now.

The revolution was violent sure... But far less people died overthrowing the Qing than have been killed by the Communist Government in even the last 20 years (Uygurs, Tibetans, Zhuang, Falun Gong, etc. have all been victimized by the government in all manner of ways including straight up murder.)

China's current political stability is a ruse, nothing more, you go into southern China (Guangxi, Yunnan) and it's basically the wild west right now.

I lived in Yangshuo (Guangxi) for almost three years, and Beijing for one year, and lost count of how many times I saw government personal of one for or the other behaving like heshehui (mafia.) I can elaborate more if people care, the point is, the China's government is hurting its people.

Google isn't exactly doing right by them, but at least they're taking a moral stand.

Re:And let the war begin

[macshit]

China has a long history of extremely violent and bloody revolutions. The relative political stability of the past 60 years is pretty much unprecedented. If the past is any indication, the transformation to complete freedom in China is not likely to go as peacefully as it did with the Soviet Union. Sudden change in China usually results in the deaths of millions. They have little history of peaceful change. The government has an obligation to tread cautiously.

Though oddly enough, the "relative political stability of the past 60 years" in China has also resulted in the deaths of millions....

The PRC government may trot out "stability" as a justification for their authoritarian policies, but if push comes to shove, there's little doubt they're quite willing to sacrifice large numbers of their populace to stay in power.

Google needs to pull out.

[Beelzebud]

I'm not sure how in the hell capitalists here in the U.S. decided we could do fair business with a totalitarian communist nation. They don't value workers rights, free speech, or even a fair marketplace.

Re:Google needs to pull out.

[courteaudotbiz]

But hey, when the labor is cheap and can do almost the same as our expensive labor, who cares?!? North American citizens? Mmmmmmmm wait a minute.... nope, the WalMart parking lot is still full....

Re:Google needs to pull out.

[DragonWriter]

I'm not sure how in the hell capitalists here in the U.S. decided we could do fair business with a totalitarian communist nation. They don't value workers rights, free speech, or even a fair marketplace.

Capitalists, as a class, aren't particularly known for being supporters of workers rights, free speech, or a fair marketplace. In fact, they are the class against whom advocates of workers rights are usually struggling, the class that seeks to suppress negative comments on their products through the legal system, and a class that seeks to lobby government to protect their own interests by creating barriers to entry to the markets in which they have established themselves.

I'm not saying those things are true of Google's owners, in particular, but certainly the idea that capitalists wouldn't deal with people for the reasons you describe is, well, hard to reconcile with most of the history of capitalists.

Re:Google needs to pull out.

[kindbud]

They don't value workers rights, free speech, or even a fair marketplace.

Yeah, but which one are you talking about, the communists or the capitalists?

Re:Google needs to pull out.

[Beelzebud]

Yeah that's a very good point. Capitalists were also against workers' right to unionize, free speech, and a fair marketplace.

I should have phrased it as "How can a free nation decide to do business with a totalitarian country.

Re:Google needs to pull out.

[Beelzebud]

It wouldn't be the first time middle class citizens did something against their own best interests.

Re:Google needs to pull out.

[panda]

I'm not sure how in the hell capitalists here in the U.S. decided we could do fair business with a totalitarian communist nation.

They don't value workers rights, free speech, or even a fair marketplace.

And neither do the capitalists here in the States.

Re:Google needs to pull out.

[MattskEE]

I'm not sure how in the hell capitalists here in the U.S. decided we could do fair business with a totalitarian communist nation.

Who cares about fair? As long as US businesses can do profitable business with a totalitarian communist nation then they will.

Re:Google needs to pull out.

[shoehornjob]

MONEY GREED MARKETSHARE umm...does that answer your question?

Re:Google needs to pull out.

[khallow]

They don't value workers rights, free speech, or even a fair marketplace.

Nah, the real problem is that the Chinese government keeps changing the rules. Every business there is doing something illegal, due to the complexity and arbitrariness of the Chinese regulatory environment. That means any time the government wants to, it can squeeze them or drive them out of China. On top of that, some government agency can just make up rules on the spot and crush a business on that basis alone. And you can't count on the bureaucrats to stay bought. Well, maybe local Chinese businesses can, but not the foreign ones that are getting shafted here.

Business thrives in a world where the rules are constant. Either government is fair and consistent or when it's bought, it stays bought. Uncertainty like this kills the ability of business to predict what it should do in the future. Even if you don't get mugged by the Chinese government, you still need to take them into account.

Re:Google needs to pull out.

[Beelzebud]

Read up on the labor movement of the early 1900's, or the era of the robber baron, and tell me that capitalists have a good track record with civil rights. They don't. China is a perfect real world example of why capitalists still doesn't have a good track record on civil rights.

Re:Google needs to pull out.

[gangien]

not directly. But thanks to the fact that in a free market, a worker can choose to work where he or she wants, guess what happens? the employers have to care about their employees, or else they'll leave. Good lord, look at all the people on slashdot, benefiting from technology, one of the places where capitalism has been allowed to thrive. What do we bitch about? meetings, coffee not being warm? booo fucking hoo.

Or let's look at hong kong. a place where government did very little. in 50 years, less than a life time, they went from being third world, to being among the richest.

So in reality, they care about the workers, because they want the most of the workers.

Re:Google needs to pull out.

[Beelzebud]

Using two isolated examples as some sort of failure of the labor movement, as a whole, is intellectually dishonest.

The labor movement put a stop to child labor, indentured servitude, and gave the workers rights that the robber barons denied them. You can hate unions all you like, but don't try to play it off like the labor movement had no positive results. They're one of the main reasons there is such a thing as a middle class.

Google, leave China alone...

[Em Emalb]

They obviously know what's best for their people, and you're just interfering. (sarcasm) Just let it go, pull completely out of the market, and call it a day. Besides, the longer this lingers on, the more Chinese black hats are gonna slam your servers.

Just "concede" defeat (and Chinese ass-hattery) and call it a day.

Re:Google, leave China alone...

[Toze]

LEAVE CHINA ALONE!

How fucking dare anyone out there make fun of China after all it has been through!

It lost its great leader, it went through civil war. It had two fuckin splitters.

Tibet turned out to be an independent nation, a source of international conflict, and now China's going through a custody battle. All you people care about is.. readers and making money off of it.

China is a COUNTRY. What you don’t realize is that China is making you all this money and all you do is write a bunch of crap about it.

It hasn’t performed in the free market in years. Its song is called “March of the Volunteers” for a reason because all you people want is MORE! MORE-MORE, MORE: MORE!

LEAVE IT ALONE! You are lucky it even sold goods to you BASTARDS! LEAVE CHINA ALONE!..Please.

/croken

Well,

[JNSL]

China hits like a girl.

Is this really that surprising?

[vivin]

Everyone expected China to do this. It also means that they are saying that the Chinese in HK are different from the rest of China. I wonder if that will affect anything. Not to be cynical, but I am sure the propaganda machine will go on overdrive to put a spin on it.

Re:Is this really that surprising?

[phantomfive]

And here is the propaganda. It basically says Google should abide by the customs of whatever country they operate in. It completely ignores the Hong Kong issue. An earlier editorial claimed that Google had broken their written agreement. They seem a bit annoyed that they couldn't accuse Google of breaking the law.

My favorite quote from the article, from Premier Wen Jiabao:

"The Chinese government will create opportunities for you, and ask you not to lose the opportunities," Wen said.

A mob boss couldn't have said it better.

Next move

[Anonymous Coward]

The next obvious move for Google is to launch their own satellites and provide free satellite internet access for everyone in the world.

Re:Next move

[Idiomatick]

The goal would be giving access to information for the Chinese people. NOT gaming... I know this is /. but even so priorities!

Don't Forget Our Pollution Exports

[eldavojohn]

But hey, when the labor is cheap and can do almost the same as our expensive labor, who cares?!? North American citizens? Mmmmmmmm wait a minute.... nope, the WalMart parking lot is still full....

You forgot about the icing on the cake: they don't care about their environment! Since their officials are all corrupt, it's just a matter of greasing some of the bureaucratic wheels and those heavy metals in the drinking water aren't a problem! Not only are we exporting unskilled labor, we're exporting our pollution!

*cough*

What's that you say? Their people are suffering? China uses the same planet we do? We'll eventually suffer from each other's pollution? I liked it better when my point of view was limited to my immediate surrounding area where I can find a coffee maker for $12 at Walmart.

Re:Google's war with China

[gman003]

The information on how to build nukes hasn't been that hard to find since the seventies. There are actually some full designs that are declassified, due to some weird loophole in Swedish (I think) law. The difficulty has almost always been materials. There is not yet a way to transmit plutonium over TCP.

Drawing politcal blood

[DigiShaman]

I think Google and everyone else knew this was a losing battle. The point however was to call the CCP out in the open and force them to bleed a little. The blood is fresh, but will anyone from the inside the party attempt reform? I find it hard to believe there is no descension among the party. Question is, how many and do they have the courage and fortitude to see this through?

Re:Drawing politcal blood

[dragisha]

Google si important thing, but Google works on money. Unless they are subsidized by US gov for losses they get for this... behaviour... they are ones being hit hard here. For Chinese people, they are just-another-internet-search and/or just-another-mobile-vendor... Winner is probably MS - US company always playing "nice". and Chinese gov is bussiness-as-usual.

Re:Chinese Gov Doesn't Get It.

[MightyMartian]

Of course they understand it. The purpose of the Great Firewall, like the Australian filtering, is to cause sufficient inconvenience and paranoia in the average user that they simply knuckle under. The map for this sort of thing is from Orwell's 1984. What counts is that you're never sure you're being watched, so you must always assume you are. That is how the Chinese government and that gang of liberty-haters in Rudd's government in Australia operate. Make it difficult enough and make it sound much more technically imposing and encompassing than it really is, then who cares about the 1-5% of computer users with the technical knowledge to circumvent the filters. They still basically have to keep it quiet lest the thought police come along and knock on their door.

This is what you get when you have a government that is stark raving terrified of its citizens. All nations should beware of politicians who show those classic signs of fear and loathing of freedom. Most politicians and bureaucrats are precisely of that nature, because the freer the citizen is, the more contained their own power is.

Hit 'em where it hurts

[Locke2005]

If you really want to hurt Google, don't completely block access... just filter out all their ads.

Re:Hit 'em where it hurts

[cpghost]

Why not? So Google will finally require https as opposed to http for their search engine front, just like they do with Gmail. A couple less eavesdroppers in the middle can't be too bad.

Whoops!

[copponex]

You made the assumption that the US government would allow such a move. We have several client states that would revolt if we provided democratizing influences like free access to information. These states include: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey...

The US Government would now allow such a move against China either, since they are our most lucrative trading partner, and damn close to becoming more than that. Money matters to us a hell of a lot more than freedom.

Re:4 to 1

[Urkki]

Does it matter? Chinese outnumber Americans 4 to 1...

Depends on how you count. If you count total body mass, the number might be the other way around...

Unfortunately...

[RingDev]

Then, Who Cares?

The stock holders. As much as we can commend the Google leadership for their moral stances, they are a corporation and they are beholden to the stock holders.

-Rick

Re:Unfortunately...

[doug20r]

Agreed, the stock holders should now be suing the Google board.

Re:U.S. Dollars

[MightyMartian]

The one reason the Chinese government could care is that it is extremely sensitive to foreign criticism. Look at how it reacted to criticism of the Beijing Olympics or, heck, even at a stupid film festival in Melbourne that nobody had ever heard of before because it showed a documentary on the ethnic Uighurs in China, to the point where the Chinese government even authorized hacking of this speck-on-the-wall festival's website (I'm sure the organized were thrilled by the Streisand Effect). It's precisely this that Google is likely hoping forces China to loosen restrictions. Of course, Google has probably miscalculated to some degree. As much as China hates foreign criticism, it acts all the worse at internal criticism.

Re:Chinese Gov Doesn't Get It.

[MightyMartian]

First of all, I'm not an American. Second, I never said Western governments are pure and good (I mean, I did directly name the Australian government). But I can tell you this, you can type "George Bush waterboarding Guantanamo" in Google in the United States, and get some pretty damning pages up right off the top. Try typing "Tienanmen massacre" in China and see what you get up.

It's night and day, no matter how much you pathetic Chinese government apologists try to assert differently.

Re:4 to 1

[Idiomatick]

3:1 still (Fascinating that the average chinese person weighs 75% of that of an american almost EXACTLY.... 180lbs vs 135lbs)

Re:Let me be the first to say

[CohibaVancouver]

I consider that in no government power can be abused long. Mankind will not bear it. If a sovereign oppresses his people to a great degree, they will rise and cut off his head.

While I generally agree with this (witness the former Soviet Bloc, the American South etc.) I sometimes wonder if it always applies. For example, the conditions in North Korea have been appalling for 50+ years. How much longer before the people rise up and cut off the sovereign's head?

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Darkness404]

But look at -what- the Chinese government are censoring. Terms like the Tienanmen Square massacre where people died, that can certainly spark protests. Religion is censored, and as we know from history even small differences can lead to large problems.

People would and have risked their lives in the name of religion. People have and would risk their lives in support of those who they believe died for a worthy cause.

If it stayed like this, I doubt it would inspire revolutions. But with all of the talk about it, it is going to make people wonder -what- they are censoring. When they figure out what, they won't understand why. When they finally understand why they will see that the Chinese government is corrupt.

Think about it this way, if you don't know about curse words, there is no need to look them up. But how many of us once our parents told us that one word was a "bad word" tried to look it up in the dictionary? None of us would look it up otherwise, but once we know that it is "forbidden" knowledge we will look it up. The Chinese government and Google are effectively telling us that there -are- "curse words" tempting some of the citizens to look it up.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[Darkness404]

I've watched a few interviews with people in North Korea, the people there honestly believe that the rest of the world is filled with starvation and that North Korea is the only place with "plenty" (even though many starve) they are told that their leader is a best selling author (I remember on one of the interviews the Korean asked if they had read Kim-Jung-Il's books because they were said that they were worldwide best sellers) and basically told that Korea is the best place on earth. They have complete isolation (embargoed against most western countries, no internet, no outside TV/radio) and honestly believe the propaganda.

I don't shop at WalMart. Still can't boycott China

[jeko]

Ever since I watched Tiananmen in horror, I have tried to boycott China. That boycott has failed miserably.

I just fixed my brakes last Saturday. I literally tried every auto parts store in town. I could not find rotors not manufactured in China, not in my town on a day's notice. I have no doubt I could have gotten some mail-order, but not in time to get to work on Monday and still keep my job.

I bought a camping knife as a present from Buck Knives, a "Made in the USA" company last year. Despite the advertising claims, the knife came stamped "Made in China."

I bought a set of Carhartt work clothes last year, another "Proudly made in America" company. They arrived with manufacturing defects. Did some checking, sure enough, Carhartt is moving it's manufacturing to China.

I got so fed up when a 14mm wrench snapped in my hand last year I was ready to cough up for Snap-On tools. Guess where Snap-On is moving their manufacturing?

Even the "proud-to-be-an-American-we-support-the-troops" redneck favorite companies Spyderco pocketknives and Surefire flashlights are moving to China.

Neal Stephenson was prophetic. The only thing we know how to make in this country any more are pizzas and movies.

Re:Let me be the first to say

[phantomfive]

The key is you have to keep most of the people relatively satisfied. Based on latin american dictatorships, if you can maintain a base of 30% that actively supports you, plus another 50% that is indifferent, then you can maintain power, even if the remainder are dying miserable deaths.

Chinese protectionism

[williamhb]

China has worked out how to be protectionist without being provably protectionist to the WTO. So, rather than offer an (illegal) export subsidy to it's manufacturers, it lowers its currency by regulation to give the same mathematical effect without allowing retaliation from other WTO countries. Rather than applying illegal tax or tariff penalties on foreign corporation, it uses clandestine hacking attempts, trumped up charges tried in closed courts (eg, Rio Tinto), and creates an environment where anybody could be arrested at any time at the government's whim, to make life uncomfortable for foreign corporations on its shores, while cosseting its own companies that have close ties to the government.

And, sadly, Obama, Brown, and other western leaders just play along, making comments like "we mustn't go down the seductive but damaging path of protectionism", not realising that their largest trading partner has already run gleefully down the path of protectionism and the west has just been too blind to notice.

Re:I don't shop at WalMart. Still can't boycott Ch

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a camping knife as a present from Buck Knives, a "Made in the USA" company last year. Despite the advertising claims, the knife came stamped "Made in China."

They meant that the box it came in was made in the USA...

"We make and manage information."

[jeko]

Also known as producing and shuffling paper. :-)

But seriously, I've heard your argument since 1975. "We're losing the low-value grunt work. The high-dollar brain work will still be here."

Except it didn't work out like that. We lost manufacturing. We've also lost research. The simple fact is when you're facing a labor pool of four billion desperate people with little-to-no-civil-rights and the same genetic possibilities as you, you're not going to compete on quality alone.

Your argument -- "They ain't never gunna be as smart as we are" -- has already been put to the test. It failed. The opposing viewpoint -- "It's a race to the bottom" -- has already been proven.

I'm just hoping we can pull up short of impact.

Re:"We make and manage information."

[snowwrestler]

By value the U.S. is still the #1 manufacturer in the world ( http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33962 ). And our research system, considered as the sum of government, corporate, and university research progams, is still very strong. (I'd say it's the best but don't have a citation...who's better?)

Re:Let me be the first to say

[shutdown -p now]

Worth remembering that most people in early-to-mid USSR believed all that, too.