A cyber attack against Google’s Chinese offices in January forced the American company to reconsider its stationing in the communist country. Google.cn had complied with Chinese censorship laws since it became available to the public in 2006 but received no protection when a rogue group attempted to tear into information regarding human rights activists in the country that Google agreed to block to the masses.
After two months of tension, the company announced Monday it would no longer censor itself in China, and began diverting Internet users in the country from google.cn to the Hong Kong Google page, which does not operate under the same data restrictions. And while the solution seems easy enough, it does not take an expert to derive that it is only a matter of time before China blocks the alternate website from its citizens who will once again be left in the dark &- the American company will continue to operate under free market ideals and China will continue to determine what its people can and cannot know.
Google is not responsible for uprooting China’s censorship policies &-&- or any, for that matter &-&- and cannot be a hero in this story. Its decision to leave the country is the only one it can make, and opting to continue to wither under the weight of an institution that does not support it and will not protect it will only worsen the relationship the two parties already share. Google goes left, and China stays right.
But Google is conscious of that disparity, and understands first-hand just how irreconcilably different its free-market aims and China’s are. So its urging of Chinese citizens to continue to use Google via the Hong Kong website to access information the company knows China regularly blocks does not add up. Google cannot possibly expect that China will suddenly relent and watch quietly as its people openly access records it has blocked from them for years. If anything, the recent discord between Google and China will only motivate the country to further restrict information.
If Google wants to leave China, it should pack up its office supplies, lick its wounds and bow out gracefully and quietly. Taking a stand for a free market is admirable, but pushing Chinese to use Hong Kong’s Google when the opportunity would only ever be tenuous at best is shameless self-promotion for a cause the company knows could never be long-lasting solution.
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