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John Metzler Archive
Monday, March 29, 2010

Google leaves for Hong Kong, but the 'Great Firewall'
has not budged

UNITED NATIONS — When the American-based internet search engine Google ceremoniously left Mainland China over growing concerns over censorship by the Beijing government, most people viewed it as a principled and overdue move. Principled because Google was not going to continue to sully its name and reputation by helping Beijing censor the internet. Overdue, since for the past four years Google was doing business in China using the rationalization that it was only obeying the laws of the land, in this case the narrow censorship rules of the Communist Party of China. Yet the Google portal was nonetheless allowing Chinese citizens access to its impressive information search capacity.

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Helping Beijing filter out nosy and politically sensitive internet searches about the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989 or touchy issues regarding Tibet were part of the deal. Obeying the law and thus aiding and abetting online censorship became a logical price to a have access in the huge Chinese market. As would be expected, China is one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing internet markets. For example, Microsoft’s search engine Bing continues to operate in China playing by “Beijing rules.”

Google has nonetheless done the right thing and pulled out of Mainland China and set up shop in Hong Kong, the former British Crown Colony on the China coast. China’s authoritarian rulers obviously don’t like free speech within the Walls and thus are not charmed by Google’s migration across the frontier to freewheeling Hong Kong.

While the Google site in China is now redirected to Hong Kong’s unfettered internet access, let’s recall that since 1997, Hong Kong has been a Special Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic of China. In other words, Google is still operating within the legal confines of the PRC.

Google executives may see this as a clever move but such a migration may cause problems for free speech in Hong Kong itself. Part of the Sino/British agreement on Hong Kong back in 1984, allows for the former colony to have 50 years of political and economic freedoms. While new Chinese rulers have been wise enough not to kill the economic Golden Goose, the political and press freedoms are far touchier. Though there is no formal media censorship Hong Kong journalists are encouraged to be patriotic, self-censorship, in this case being not to directly criticize Beijing’s rulers.

Naturally many Western executives feel that Google’s moving out will force Beijing to become more transparent concerning its online censorship. Logically this may be true but this is not how China’s Marxist mandarins operate. Grand-standing public pressures seldom work on the PRC and in fact can be counterproductive to the cause of internet and press freedoms. Moreover, China’s own search engines such as Baidu are major players in the fast expanding Mainland market and more than fill the void left by Google.

So shall China allow its citizens unrestricted access to Google’s Hong Kong search engine site? Or will the PRC’s “Great Firewall” its clinically comprehensive censorship system which controls all website portal access, simply block Google searches coming back from Hong Kong?

Metaphorically Google sees itself outside the Great Wall of China, defying censorship and basking in the glitter and freedom of coastal Hong Kong. For the Beijing rulers it’s all about control and censorship provides the means to that political end. The contrasts are glaring but China is not an open society, except occasionally in virtual reality.


John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He writes weekly for WorldTribune.com.
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