14 DAY TRIAL // The writing's on the wall for Google's stay in China, at least as far as the search engine is concerned. The first clear indications came a couple of days ago when reports claimed the imminent announcement of pull-out. Now the Financial Times is also claiming the very same thing. But the clearest sign that the negotiations between them went bad is that China is ramping up the anti-Google and anti-US propaganda trying to politicize the move while officially claiming the exact opposite.
A report from the state-run Xinhua news agency over the weekend has been picked up by most news wire agencies. It accuses Google of pushing a political agenda and even of it having close ties with US intelligence and the government.
"Regrettably, Google's recent behaviors show that the company not just aims at expanding business in China, but is playing an active role in exporting culture, value and ideas," Xinhua reporters are quoted as saying. "It is unfair for Google to impose its own value and yardsticks on Internet regulation to China, which has its own time-honored tradition, culture and value."
In a sense, Xinhua is right, Google is trying to impose its own values and principles, which are mostly in line with the libertarian views in the US, but that's only because the official 'values' in China are so hypocritical and plain wrong. What's Google's bigger agenda and if it is motivated by commercial, political or just even pure motives is besides the point, censorship in China has nothing to do with "time-honored tradition" and everything to do with the government keeping its people in the dark and at bay.
"Whether it leaves or not, the Chinese government will keep its Internet regulation principles unchanged. One company's ambition to change China's Internet rules and legal system will only prove to be ridiculous," the Chinese report also says. "And whether leaving or not, Google should not continue to politicalize itself, as linking its withdrawal to political issues will lose Google's credibility among Chinese netizens."
Again, Xinhua is spot on. The notion that any company that would actually believe it can change China's views on censorship is ridiculous even if the company in case is the second largest search engine in the country with a 25 percent market share, that's out of the 384 million people who use the web in China.
"Google's high-level officials have intricate ties with the US government. It is also an open secret that some security experts in the Pentagon are from Google," reporters from Xinhua wrote in a commentary, says the BBC.
This final statement may be a bit of stretch. It's easy to see why China would like its people to think so, there is a growing anti-US sentiment in the country, like in much of the rest of the world, one that the Chinese government more than welcomes, albeit not outspokenly. Having its people already question US motives means that China can pin any action or view which goes against the government's on a hidden US agenda, which is precisely what is happening with Google now. And the results are already beginning to show.
But, while it's clear that Google, like any other US company, has some ties with the US government and is also required to provide intelligence agencies there with information, it is very unlikely that there are "intricate ties" between Google and the White House.
The entire China - Google debate started when the US company announced that it would no longer censor results on its Chinese search engine. This was widely seen as Utopian and most people believed that Google would be forced to pull out of the market. The latest reports indicate that an announcement on the matter may be coming from Google later today.