Google / China Conflict

In 2005 Google China was launched. That might seem normal, just Google opening a new branch overseas, but China was a special case for two reasons. First, China has 400 million internet users, (The U.S.A. has a population of around 314 million people, total.) so Google wanted a slice of the market share there. Second, China has very strict internet censorship laws that conflict with Google's policy of freedom of information.



The Chinese government has justified it's internet censorship policy, also known as "The Great Firewall of China", as protecting minors from pornography and other explicit content, but it also blocks out content that would the Chinese government would consider subversive, such as the Tienanmen square protests or Tibet separatism.

When Google launched Google China, they did censor their search results in accordance with Chinese law, along with other search engines like Baidu, the largest Chinese search engine. Google only released Blogger and Gmail in China after the Chinese government agreed that they would remain confidential - that the government could not gather information from them.

In January 2010, a hacking attempt was made on the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Google blamed the Chinese government, demanded that it change it's policy on internet censorship, and briefly gave uncensored search results. Google went back to censored search results quickly and without explanation.

China's government has denied any connection to the hacking attempts, and has said that such actives are illegal.

This has created tension between China and the U.S., with Hillary Clinton speaking out against Chinese internet censorship, and Ma Zhaoxu, China's foreign minister, saying that China allows freedom of speech on the internet that complies with the Chinese constitution.

In March, later that year, Google China moved it's servers to Hong Kong, where due to China's laws, it could provide uncensored search results to mainland China. In June, China tried to shut down Google China, and stopped Google from redirecting to it's Hong Kong servers, but Google still has a link to it's Hong Kong servers on Google China, although the links to censored search results found there are non-functioning.

In November 2010, leaked documents from the U.S. State Department were posted on WikiLeaks that indicated that the hacking attempts on Google were part on a Chinese plan from 2002 to undermine their political opponents. They might have done this because hacking is a cheap way to strike at opponents that cannot be threatened by their military force.

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