Today my guest is fellow Laowai blogger Matt.  He is the resident Kunminger (that is a word, right?), and his most recent intelligent posts have been about learning and teaching Chinese, as well as cooking and alcoholism.  Also, he keeps his own personal blog, Matt Schiavenza – A China Journal, which is a worthy addition to your Google Reader, whenever it’s not blocked.  Today we’re doing a bit of a topic potpourri, discussing Google, prostitution, and the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the National People’s Congress.

So join us for Fact or Fiction 4:  March Madness~!!!

1. Google’s decision to redirect traffic to Google Hong Kong was a cop-out.

Glen: FACT
Sure they are shutting down Google.cn, but they aren’t fully pulling out of China, just moving to pseudo-China, or China-lite.  I know that HK has “limited autonomy” until 2047, but the money they make is still going to find its way into the PRC’s coffers eventually.  That’s not exactly being not evil.

Matt: FICTION
I’ve gotten into trouble for writing this before, but Hong Kong for all intents and purposes is an independent country, one with its own laws, currency, and media censorship policy. By moving its servers to HK, Google is sending a not-too-subtle message to Beijing that a vibrant, liberal media atmosphere exists right on their border, and that in an important sense China is on the proverbial ‘wrong side of history’ with this issue.

Hmmm off to a rocky start.  0 for 1.

2. You are getting excited about the Shanghai Expo

Glen: FACT
Partially because I’m so close here in Suzhou that I’ve been getting a lot of the hype, but not too much.  I think it’s going to be an interesting to see what the world decides to expose, and how China reacts.  If I’ve learned anything in the past few years, it’s that the Chinese know how to treat guests. I hope that they show the rest of the world that too.

Matt: FICTION
Alas, my residence here in the far southwest capital of Kunming has kept me out of the Expo loop, so I can’t say I’m getting excited about it just yet. I will say that Ryan’s recent LL post profiling the various national exhibitions did pique my interest and I may in fact get the fever before the spring is out.

Mayhap a bit of Laowai regionalism coming up here as us Yangtze-Delta folk can’t see eye-to-eye with those in the land of the sun.  0 for 2.

3. Prostitution is a major problem in China and it needs to be addressed.  (Note: this is in response to the series “Prostitution in China” on Renmin Shimbun)

Glen: FACT
I was simply shocked by the data in those posts, I knew that prostitution was bad in China (especially around tourist areas), but I had no idea just how bad it actually was. It is a tricky thing to deal with though, as harsher laws will not eliminate the problem, instead people in China need to be educated about the dangers of STIs, and there needs to be more poverty elimination support, then it will be less of an issue.

Matt: FACT
Rampant prostitution and the official denial that it exists is an enormous problem in China, where the AIDS virus has spread markedly in the past twenty years or so. The total lack of industry regulation has created an exploitative situation for the young women who get involved and has left them vulnerable to contracting devastating diseases. I’m of the opinion that legalization and regulation with health checks would be the best policy, not only in China but in other countries in which prostitution is prohibited.

Hopefully everyone agrees with that one, I mean really. 1 for 3. Time for the ol’ switcheroo.

4. Chinese leaders have been all talk and no action at the recent National People’s Congress.

Matt: FACT
But alas, were we expecting anything different? Much of the decisions that truly affect people’s lives occur far from the spotlight in China, and this annual pageant involving the country’s embarrassing rubber-stamp parliament is no exception. The only interesting development in China’s political world is the rise of Bo Xilai, a so-called ‘princeling’ who could have a major role in formulating government policy following the scheduled reshuffle in 2012.

Glen: FACT
Well said my friend.  All talk and no action seems to be par for the course for the NPC.  No matter how much they talk about opening up, implementing more democratic reforms, or any of the number of promises, nothing seems to happen.  I’m not 100% certain that Bo will effect too much, I mean it wasn’t that long ago that people said similar things about Hu.

Now it looks like we are all talk, and some agreement. 2 for 4.

5. An Asian wide Free Trade Agreement would benefit China greatly

Matt: FACT
China’s combination of technical know-how, impressive infrastructure, and persistently cheap and abundant labor would position it well in the event that free trade spreads in East Asia. Quite a few countries on China’s periphery simply cannot offer this combination of factors, and opening the floodgates would harm infant industry development in countries like Vietnam and Indonesia. China, on the other hand, would be the winner.

Glen: FACT
I think it would.  Free Trade in North America saw a number of companies close up shop in Canada to move to the US, only to see them then move to Mexico.  As a Canadian, NAFTA is sometimes a dirty word, especially because the Americans only follow it when it is beneficial to them (see:  Lumber, Softwood).  But NAFTA certainly helped the US Economy become the powerhouse that it was during the Clinton years, and it is easy to see China benefit in a similar way from such a set-up.  That being said, anything more than an ASEAN Free trade is a long way away.

We now how a tie for most agreements in the storied four month history of Fact or Fiction!  3 for 5.

6. You expect to be writing when Lost Laowai gets to it’s 1000 post.

Matt: FACT
Or at least, I hope so! Writing for Lost Laowai’s intelligent audience has been a real pleasure, and given the intensity and breadth of discussions we routinely have in this space I wouldn’t be surprised to see LL survive to its 1,000th post and beyond.

Glen: FACT
Well only 495 left to go after this one!  I have already signed on to stay in China for another 2 years, with a big possibility of sticking around for longer, so really, why not keep blogging about it?  I just hope that I can do it more frequently than I have been doing lately!

And that concludes it. 4 for 6.  The first time my guest and I have ever topped .500.  Someone call Guinness.

As always, what do you think?

Now when visiting google.cn, visitors are automatically redirected to Google.com.hk, which now features Simplified Chinese options and search abilities (perhaps it always did?). And while search results are no longer self-censored by the search company, they are now subject to the daft diligence of the Great Firewall of China. Searching for terms deemed too sensitive for your own good will return the “connection has been reset” error that we’ve all come to love.

When Google first made the announcement that they were considering dumping China, there was a lot of conjecture that the company was playing up the “we don’t want to censor our search results for the good of the people” angle in an effort to quietly leave a market that they weren’t dominating. It appears to me that by moving to Hong Kong they are illustrating that supplying China with a non-censoredBaidu Chinese alternative is still a priority of the company, and perhaps this was more about Google not “doing evil” than people first gave them credit for.

Unsurprisingly, officials weren’t short on words regarding Google’s actions. As Reuters reported, an unnamed official from China’s State Council Information Office (SCIO) said:

“Foreign companies operating in China must abide by Chinese laws. Google has violated the written promise it made on entering the Chinese market. It is totally wrong in halting (censorship) filtering of its search provider and also making aspersions and accusations towards China about hacking attacks. We firmly oppose politicising commercial issues, and express our dissatisfaction and anger at Google Inc’s unreasonable accusations and practices.”

“After repeated requests from Google, and to hear its real views face-to-face and demonstrate China’s sincerity, on January 29 and February 25 of this year responsible officials from China’s relevant authorities held talks with Google, and offered patient and detailed explanations about the issues raised.”

“They stressed that foreign companies in China should abide by Chinese laws, and if Google is willing to abide by Chinese laws, we continue to welcome it operating and developing in China. If Google insists on dismantling the search service of its Chinese website, that is Google’s own affair. But it must follow Chinese law and international custom, and responsibly handle the aftermath.”

“The Chinese government encourages the development and spread of the Internet, and promotes the opening of the Internet to the outside (world). Discussion and expression on China’s Internet are very lively, and digital commerce is developing rapidly. The facts demonstrate that China has a healthy environment for investing in and developing the Internet. China will unwaveringly adhere to a guiding policy of opening up, and it welcomes participation by foreign businesses in developing the Chinese Internet.”

The thing that concerns me most about the whole situation is the way that the (state-controlled) media so effectively crafts a narrative that suits the average citizen’s view of national pride vs. Western bias. And while I’m hopeful that smarter opinions will prevail (gTranslation), it’s not something we’ve seen much of in China.

Rebecca MacKinnon breaks it down into the Chinese government having two possible routes of response:

1. Block Google.com.hk, and risk drawing more attention both from non-Chinese media, as well as making more and more Mainlanders aware of the censorship practices.
2. Allow Google to continue with the rest of their lawful in-China operations (ad sales, etc.) and declare a victory in getting the non-censored search out of the country.

How it plays out is too unpredictable for this lowly blogger to guess, but there’s no question that Google’s move to Hong Kong was certainly the wildcard shakeup that most of us were hoping for. It’s not open defiance and not full retreat. Good on Google for taking a very Chinese method of solving the problem and finding a middle way.

I look forward to your thoughts below. Also, for a bit of a primer on the situation, check out Andrew Lih’s post.

Here’s a great video recorded at TED2010 earlier this month in which TED curator Chris Anderson talks to Google co-founder Sergey Brin about the company’s recent statements about their China operations. You can read the whole transcript of the talk here.

Apologies for the far right-side of the video being cut off. It shouldn’t affect functionality of the embedded video and is only a minor amount of the actual video. Also, the video plays well in full-screen.

Since the Google announcement last week, Chinese Googlers have traveled to Google China’s headquarters in Beijing to pay tribute to the search engine by laying flowers and lighting candles.  As more Googlers come to pay their respect, they’ve noticed that the previous visitors’ flowers have been removed by alleged “security guards”.  A local security guard has reportedly said that in order to lay flowers, people would need to apply for a permit from the relevant department.  Without said permit, Googlers would be conducting an “illegal flower tribute”.

The phrase “illegal flower tribute” is now a Chinese internet meme.  Though like many things on the internet, it’s blocked by numerous Chinese websites, including Baidu, Google’s biggest competitor in China.  The California based custom goods website Zazzle.com has already jumped on board with multiple shirts sporting the phrase in Chinese (非法献花) as well as a “no flowers” logo for the steep, steep price of $22.95 (157RMB) not including the international shipping that would be required for anyone around you to understand what your shirt even means.

Today, like much of the blogosphere we will be talking about the Google vs. GFW debate.   Which makes my guest, Steven, the perfect counterpart.  The current resident of Suzhou, writes here at Lost Laowai and most of his posts have a technological theme.  He is also the sole China blogger for CNET Asia with his blog Sinobytes.

So without further ado, let’s get down to Fact or Fiction 2:  Electric Googaloo!!!

1. If Google does leave China, more companies will follow them

Glen: FACT

Doing business in China has been seen in recent years as a necessary evil to compete on a global scale. As such a number of corporations have had to make certain sacrifices in order to make that happen. However, here we see a large company flat out saying no. In business, one of the sure fire ways to profit is to simply do whatever profitable people are doing. Google is one of the most profitable companies on the planet, and surely other companies will join them in their protests against the Great Firewall. Whether they are motivated by altruism or profit is another debate.

Steven: FICTION

Google was always going to be in the tightest spot when operating in China: a new media company whose motto is ‘Don’t be evil’ doing business in a country where free-flowing information is seen as an ‘evil’ threat to national stability. And although I’m not convinced that Google’s motives are genuinely pushing forward a freer environment for search and new media (what’s Google China’s $300mil out of Google Inc.’s $22 billion annual revenue), I’m convinced that no other companies will follow Google, if Google China is indeed shuttered. There are already some significant concerns for companies coming to operate in China: getting ripped off in your joint-venture, lack of intellectual property protection, internal spying, corruption, and the general ‘brown envelope’ culture of doing business – those same, wider issues will remain whether Google leaves or not.

0 for 1 to start.  Funny considering just how jaded both of our answers were.

2. James Fallows was right, this is China’s Bush-Cheney era

Glen: FACT

China's turn for these two? by BlatantNews.com

Let’s see: flexing their muscle on the international scene. Check. Limiting the rights of their citizens while trumpeting freedom. Check. Upsetting the world in the process. Check. A large loyal following of people whose most intelligent answer to criticism is “If you don’t like it just leave”. You better believe that’s a check. We’re just some electoral fraud and a housing collapse away from being able to yell “BINGO!”

Steven: FICTION

The amount of civil liberties that the Bush-Cheney era infringed – most grossly: wire-tapping their own law-abiding citizens, one illegal war, and one Geneva convention-defying detainee camp – means that you’d have to be a tin-pot dictator to come close to the Cowboy/Face-shooter duo. More accurately, China has new found confidence backed up by wealth – a few trillion of it being US dollars – so the authorities are getting into the swing of throwing their weight around a bit, but nothing more.

0 for 2!  I would be mad except “Cowboy/Face-shooter duo” is too awesome of a summary for the diabolical duo to be mad at.

3. Google will end up investing in a Chinese web start up if they do leave

Glen: FICTION

I think that their dealings with the Chinese will be heavily scrutinized after this, and any investment in some Chinese web company would be seen as “being evil” and bad for their corporate image. As much as the cynic in me thinks that’s what they will do, the other side of me thinks that it won’t happen.

Steven: FACT

China may be a small piece of the pie right now for Google, in terms of desktop and mobile searches, and ad revenue, but that can only grow in future – especially mobile ad revenue, a market that’s only now kicking off in China. Perhaps investing in a few start-ups here across those three key sectors – social networking might be best avoided – might be the best/only way for Google to keep their thumb in the pie, without their name being plastered all over the product.

Still in disagreement 0 for 3.  Time to switch!

4. The WTO will investigate the Great Firewall as a trade barrier

Steven: FACT

Oh, I do hope so. But, really, think about the YouTube blockage as being a tariff on steel, beef, or tyres (sorry, ‘tires’), then you’ll realise that the WTO and world governments have been curiously quiet about Net Nanny stamping on so many foreign websites here. If you add up all of the lost revenue of Facebook, Youtube, and Google’s various web apps, it surely amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars. And, to be frank, WTO intervention is our only hope of the Great Firewall being trimmed down. But don’t expect it to be knocked down.

Glen: FICTION

As much as I would love to see this happen, I just don’t see it in the cards.  If the WTO plays hardball with China, what will happen next?  Will China just leave the WTO? Then who would that hurt more? A Trade Organization that doesn’t have the world’s largest exporter is about as legitimate as an emissions agreement without the world’s largest polluter (see:  Protocol, The Kyoto).  Sadly, I think that we are reaching a point where the WTO may need China more than the other way around.

Interesting points of view on this one, I’d be interested in what those of you in comment land have to say.  0 for 4 though still.

5. Google knew what they were getting into when they opened an office in China, and does not deserve sympathy.

China and Google: Destined for Trouble? by pamhule

Steven: FACT

I’m a huge admirer of Google in general, and a big user of their web apps, but on this issue I can only say: If you jump into the lion enclosure, don’t be surprised when you get bitten on the ass.

Glen: FACT

I couldn’t agree more my friend.  They knew the Chinese laws before they opened up their offices here.   While I wish that things were turning out differently for them, it’s hard to really see a shock here.  If you play with fire you will get burned, if you play with China you will be censored.

And we finally have some agreement!  I guess nobody has Sympathy for The Devil Google. 1 for 5.

6. The internet situation is the biggest drawback of living in China

Steven: FACT

People? Awesome. Food? Gorgeous. Culture? Fascinating. The internet here? Don’t even get me started… Well, to avoid all the swearing and a raising of one’s blood pressure, a VPN is as essential as a visa now. It may double the cost of getting online, but it’s better to have the full internet than the sad, messed-up, Net Nanny-approved intranet that exists since last summer.

Glen: FICTION

I was all set to answer fact on this one, but then I remembered something that is, for the time being, worse.  The availability of health care.  While I have thankfully never been to the hospital here, I have heard some horror stories of people who have.  I know that this is getting better all the time, while the censorship seems to be getting worse, but for the time being I’d put the GFW in a close second on this undesirable list.

And that concludes it.  1 for 6.

So as always, we’ve got to turn it back to all of you out there.  Thoughts?  Comments?  Concerns?

Well-wishers leave flowers at Google China HQ earlier today

Google has announced that it might soon pull the plug on its operations in China, citing grave concerns over some recent, bizarre hack attacks, and lack of freedom of speech.

The official notice on the main Google blog reveals that a concerted hacking attack, which originated in China, has been using phishing and malware to access the accounts of human rights activists.

In the statement, the Chief Legal Officer of Google, David Drummond, detailed the attacks in full. It was not stated explicitly, but I read in the implication that these concerted attempts to get into the Gmail inboxes and Google accounts of these human rights activists was actually government sponsored.

In addition, Mr. Drummond called-out “the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web” in China, but did not name any sites in particular, not even mentioning its own sites which are blocked (of which there are many: Youtube, Blogspot blogs, and Picasa Web Albums, to name only three of over a dozen).

So, if Google.cn is canned, and its offices in China closed (they employ 700 people right now), it will also end Google’s enforced policy of self-censorship in China, whereby Google.cn results are ‘harmonised’ of critical, anti-government material, as well as any sex or nudity.

Already, many in Silicon Valley are praising Google for taking a stand against repression and sinister interference. But is that really what motivates Google?

The most recent figures suggest that Baidu has 75% of the search users in mainland China, to Google’s 18%. So, this being the cost-benefit analysis world of business, perhaps Google is deciding that Google China is not viable.

Or, more curiously, perhaps the GOOG is trying the Jedi mind-trick of folding a failing business while making it look like they’re the do-gooders.

Another possibility is that Google knows that threatening the authorities here is dangerous and counter-productive, and so this ‘threat’ is actually just a final shout of desperation; knowing that Google China is screwed, with no hope of being able to do business here without any state-level intervention.

So, what’s next? Google.cn will allow all search results as soon as this evening? A blockage of Google.cn – and maybe other Google domains, too – by the Beijing authorities? Perhaps the government will say “Don’t let the door hit you on the arse on the way out” and Google will leave, to a hero’s welcome in the Western media? Or, more forward-thinkingly, perhaps Google will do a ‘Yahoo!’ and pull out in order to focus on investment in Chinese start-ups instead?

Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and more: all blocked in China

Just a few months ago I posted here on Lost Laowai about China’s massive web-filtering system, and how it was becoming distinctly anti-social in that it was targeting social-networking and web 2.0 sites, such as Facebook and YouTube, which are characterised by allowing a fast flow of information and ideas.

Bad news: that’s getting worse, and this time there’s no identifiable reason. Usually, a wave of tightening-up on the internet by the Chinese government comes immediately after some particular incident; we saw it right after the troubles in Tibet, then again in Xinjiang, and recurring at sensitive anniversaries. But, this summer, no clear justification for new blockages – it just seems to be malicious, and that makes it more sinister.

So, to add to lengthy list of blocked websites from earlier this summer (see the footnote, at the end of this post) we must now add a few more:

Vimeo
Friendfeed
Bit.ly (URL shortening service)
Post.ly (URL shortening service)
Blip.tv
Yahoo Meme
Google Documents (accessible again)
Fileden.com
iTweet.net (a twitter web app)
Twitzap (a twitter web app)
Dabr.co.uk (a twitter web app)
TwitterGadget (a tiny twitter app on iGoogle)

The situation really is getting ridiculous. A few other ways to access twitter still exist, thankfully. Just this afternoon one China-based expat on twitter commented that “China no longer has internet. It has LAN” (h/t @illuminantceo), which is an apt description of how insular and freaky it’s getting.

It’s not just an inconvenience to laowais, remember. Such a crackdown has economic repercussions for everyone in the country, as well as drastically stifling creativity and the sharing of ideas (those last two, obviously, are actual aims of the Chinese government who implement the Great Firewall). It’s impossible to quantify the economic damage done by this web-filtering, and it might even amount to quite little, but undeniably it costs a lot of companies extra time and frustration, and limits some companies in dealing with foreign clients and partners.

So, this second major wave of censorship is clearly aimed at slowing or stopping the flow of information and ideas. It’s visible, too, in the Chinese webosphere, where severe Terms of Service on websites or constant filtering of content means that ‘sensitive’ material is spotted and deleted (and the account removed) possibly within an hour of offending content being posted. Try putting up a sensitive video on Tudou or Youku, and see how long it lasts. Thus, Chinese websites don’t get blocked, as such, as there’s already that two-pronged devils fork of enforced compliance.

Foreign-based websites cannot be similarly coerced, so they just get blocked.

Even Virtual Private Networks are under stronger attack, as detailed quite recently by Rebecca Mackinnon (requires a proxy or VPN to access inside China).

Anger is clearly mounting over this. Right now, on twitter – despite there being fewer ways to access it – I can clearly see hundreds of tweets regarding the Great Firewall – labelled as #gfw and #fuckgfw – by younger tech-savvy Chinese people detailing sites that have been newly whisked away into purgatory, and also expressing a hell of a lot of anger aimed at the web-filtering system and the government in Beijing as well.

Just a few days ago, at the World Media Summit which was this year hosted in Beijing, China’s President Hu Jintao suggested “cooperation, action, win-win, and development,” in the realms of all world media, and called for “monitoring by the public and the safeguarding of the rights to be informed, to participation, to expression…..and their important functions put into play,” to an audience that included News Corporation CEO, Rupert Murdoch. If you’ve managed to avoid vomiting after such a display of hypocrisy, then you have a stronger stomach than I.

From where I’m standing, the Chinese government is failing its people with such extensive censorship; there’s a massive disparity between the kindness, good-natured openness and eagerness to learn of the Chinese people, and the paranoid, low-down, two-faced, narrow-minded bigotry of the Chinese government.

I’m ordinarily against intervention by foreign governments, but right now I’d love to see President Obama and some European leaders stand up – in the manner of John F. Kennedy Ronald Reagan on the Berlin Wall – and say “Tear down this Firewall.”

===

Footnote:

Here’s my previous block-list, from July 31st this year. All sites mentioned below except ‘blog.com’ seem to still be blocked.

Facebook
twitter
YouTube
Blogger blogs
Wordpress free blogs
Typepad blogs
Blog.com blogs
Opera blogs
Tumblr
LiveLeak
Google’s Picasa Web Albums (log-in accessible, but borked thereafter)
Google Image search results (very frequent re-set connections)
Orkut
Bebo

This week Google has been under attack in China over internet pornography, especially with regards its ‘search suggestions’ drop-down box, which can suggest some salacious terms for fairly innocuous words. For this, Google was “strongly condemned” by the China Internet Illegal Information Reporting Center (CIIRC), which describes itself as a non-governmental organisation on its own website.

From the CIIRC’s condemnation, the situation escalated quickly this week, with the Chinese government clearly unleashing the hounds on Google, with all national media – which are, with no exceptions, state-controlled – running the story of how Google is polluting China’s youth with its lewd search suggestions and pornographic links to foreign websites. Thus, Google has been bashed by national and local TV and newspapers for three solid days.

Suggestive Suggestions…
Admittedly, Google was caught red-handed with its overly-sexual search suggestions. These things appear by default across the Google globe, so when I start typing “football” it will begin to suggest more precise terms, such as “football games”, “football results”, etc., which is all very useful. But, as the Chinese media has been showing all week, if you type the word “son” in Chinese, on Google.cn, it will then offer up crude suggestions, such as “son and mother incest”. In all fairness, they got busted. And, as I type this, Google has switched off the suggestions only on Google.cn.

Google has already put in place a lot of safeguards to appease the difficult Chinese market. In China, on Google.cn only (which will appear by default if you type in Google.com but you’re in China AND your web browser’s settings are set to Chinese-language) it is not possible to switch off the ‘SafeSearch’ feature, and a lot of politically sensitive and pornographic material has already been removed.

So, from within China, if you search for ‘Tiananmen Square’ you get only views of the plaza, and not images from the events of 1989. And, if you search for “sexy” (in either Chinese or English), you will find no nudity in the image search results, in accordance with partial or full nudity being banned in China. So, Google has already being done things “with Chinese characteristics” during its four years in the Chinese market, but it has still been caught in the wrong this week, and will not be allowed to forget it.

Fixing It…
Google is now hurrying to fix the problem, by switching off the suggestions (easy), and removing all pornography from its results (not so easy). Google people have explained how they met with some government representatives a few days ago…

“to discuss problems with the Google.cn service and its serving of pornographic images and content based on foreign language searches”

“We are undertaking a thorough review of our service and taking all necessary steps to fix any problems with our results,“ a Google spokesperson said in an e-mail. “This has been a substantial engineering effort, and we believe we have addressed the large majority of the problem results”.
- an unnamed Google spokesperson

Unspecified “punishment” has been threatened by the Chinese government, and Google has been apologetic, issuing the statement: “We have been continually working to deal with pornographic content, and material that is harmful to children, on the Web in China”. But that may not placate the government.

All material on the Chinese webosphere is already subject to nationwide self-checking, where the punishment is usually getting shut-down, with no legal recourse, as happened to many websites last year during a massive ‘purge’ of indecent material, where Google’s rival Baidu, was actually the main focus of the censure.

Ulterior Motives…?
Possible motives for government and state-media attacking search engines are numerous, but the two most significant ones are fear of losing influence, and fear of losing revenue; both of which are likely to occur as younger, tech-savvy Chinese – some of whom are now fluent in English, or one or two other languages – are choosing their news sources on the web, and not all of them are domestic, and therefore contains news that has not passed through the state’s filter.

As for revenue, in attacking search giants like Baidu and Google, and video-sharing sites such as Youku and Tudou, the state, and state-media, can keep a check on new media which might well steal lucrative ad revenue, especially if corporations figure that a lot of young people spend more time online than watching either national or local news shows and dramas, which are the time-slots with the priciest advertising packages.

One More Thing: “Green Dam”
To throw one more ulterior motive into the mix, the whole Google debacle this week could well be linked to the upcoming, government-sanctioned web filter, dubbed “Green Dam-Youth Escort”, or ‘Green Dam’ for short. This piece of filtering sofware reared its head two weeks ago, when the Chinese government mandated it ought to be compulsory on all brand-new PCs sold in China from July 1st (as well as installed in retrospect on every computer in schools across the country).

This left PC makers scrambling to jump to another new restriction in its China operations, while at the same time not being seen to be a party to stifling of free speech – because many fear that ‘Green Dam’ is not just a porn filter to protect young eyes, it is also a political filter to wash young minds. Indeed, by peering into the software package, it is clear that it will also filter politically-sensitive keywords, as well as (attempt) to detect fleshy skin-tones that would indicate images of naked people.

In just the week after Green Dam emerged, it was exposed as containing stolen code from a US firm’s web filter app, and in tests Green Dam has been seen to have failed to detect African-American porn (because it was focusing only on pinky flesh tomes), sensde that pigs were naked humans, and began to filter any site beginning with the letter ‘F’ after a tester deliberately visited a poltically sensitive website.

The backlash against Green Dam has been swift and surprisingly large, in China as well as around the world. Search twitter trends for the hashtag #greendam or look at the satirical cartoons made by Chinese netizens and it is clear that younger web users have been outraged at their government having insulted their intelligence by mandating software to shepherd their time on the internet.

“Don’t be Evil”…?
So, although Google has been found to have some sexual content in their search suggestions and web searches from Google.cn, it may be a whipping boy in a propaganda campaign gearing towards the launch of Green Dam on all new PCs, with no signs of the government backing down over Green Dam, despite calls for a rethink based on security and online freedoms. But, Google in China will survive, and this will prove to have been just another fiery hoop that it has had to jump through in order to have access to China’s 300 million regular web users.

As for Chinese netizens, the spectre of Green Dam approaches, but there are some get-outs: it’s not compulsory on old machines, it only works with Internet Explorer (so, go get Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari – all of which are much better than IE anyway – if Green Dam has been slapped onto your office or school PC), only on the Windows operating system, and Green Dam is uninstall-able on new machines that have come with it.