Click Here to Subsribe to the 'The Vance Report' Feed I’m not one to make many predictions. Especially when we are talking about any issues related to China. Everything changes way too fast here.
I will, however, confidently make a prediction about Google.cn.
It’s not going anywhere.
I know it, you know it, Google knows it, heck…the Chinese government even knows it. Which is exactly why the news about Google’s threatened pullout has been censored here in China. Beijing knows it’s an empty threat and they want to act as if nothing happened when everything quiets down.
Ironic, isn’t it? The Chinese government is censoring the news that Google wants to stop censoring internet content in China.
Only in China.
I’ll address the censorship issue in a moment. But first things first.
Google accuses someone (or something) in China of having launched a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” in order to gain access to the email accounts of some prominent human right’s activists.
A charge that Beijing probably won’t even bother to deny. Not with a straight face, at least.
Google is understandably furious about these alleged cyber attacks but its threat to pull out of China rings hollow in my ears.
Whether Google.cn exists or not, hackers in China are still going to go about their business. They don’t need Google to be here. After all, Chinese hackers have successfully hacked all kinds of secure systems around the world, including the Pentagon’s not too long ago.
If anyone should be blamed for this attack, it should be Google itself for not doing a better job of protecting its user accounts.
This knee-jerk reaction by Google seems to be an attempt to take the focus of its own inadequacies. Instead of whining and crying about the attacks, maybe Google needs to take a closer look at how its cyber security is handled in China.
Which is exactly what Google is going to have to do because there is no way that it is going to to ditch China. Not after the millions it has invested here. And not after it considers the fact that China’s online population grew over 40% between 2008 and 2009 and continues to grow by leaps and bounds.
And then there is the censorship issue. Everybody loves Google this week as the company of ’Do no evil’ announces that it will no longer be censoring Beijing deemed sensitive content on its Google.cn.
Google says it will over the next few weeks be “discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we would operate an unfiltered search engine within the law…”
And mark my words. Beijing will act as if it is willing to make concessions. Beijing will give Google more leeway to help ease the internet giant’s conscience. And Google will come away looking as clean and pure as the driven snow.
But in the end, search engine or no search engine, Beijing still controls what websites are accessible here in China. It still has a finger on every little byte that enters China from other countries.
Every website ever created about the Dalai Lama and Tiananmen Square could be available on Google.cn tomorrow but still be blocked by Beijing.
In the end, we must remember that nothing can stop those in China who really want to know the truth. There are many ways to easily bypass the Great Firewall of China and access whatever you want to view.
While the issue of whether or not Google should censor content may be of great ideological importance in the West, it has little significance here.
Too many Chinese people know that what they are seeing on television or reading on the internet is a result of censorship. And they like it. Why? Because they trust their government implicitly.
And they wouldn’t have it any other way.
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