Google's Decision

I saw news about google is going to pull out of China, saying that there were massive attacks from Chinese hackers from China, whose target is mainly the human rights activists' gmail account and also it has been sick of the information censoring requirement by China. On the other hand, the chief architect of Baidu, who has nearly 60% of the market share in China and has very close relationship with China government, said the decison of google is not because of the reason given by google but some financial problems, and then he said the statement given by google made him sick.

For me, I think it does not really matter if google's quit is because of political reason or not, what I concern is the fact that if China government controls the information or not. The answer is a big YES.

In China or any other China-like countries, the information control is very strict, it commonly named as censorship. With the developing of moden technology and internet, on the one hand, China has more than 340 million people online instead of 10 million a decade ago, on the other hand, those 340 million now and 10 million before, can only have those information that the government allows, in this extent, people can have no more than what traditional newspaper and state-run media provide, as matter of fact, this is not the essence of internet. The reason we call internet as WWW is because we consider the information there should be world wide, though there may have some indecent and improper things there as well. So, what China, as a powerful country, should do is to minimise the negative results by using its superpower instead to cut the throat of the internet.

When I was in China, the internet control was such boldly, the government did not give any reason, if people tried to open, let's say, BBC, what the IE displayed was just, "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage", something like loosing connection. I heard some friends who are currently in China, said, what the gorvernment does now is much smarter than before. China announces that it is going to tidy up the whole internet (in China of course), the target is for all those bad things in web, such like porn,and understandablly, anti-socialism and anti-state information. My understanding is, what the government does is trying to tighten the control of internet, it may close some porn webs and BT downloading websits, but what it really wants is to close and delete some unacceptable (in the eyes of the Party)information. Google would display something like "the web could not be open due to the local regulation" if people try to open, let's say, BBC again. It is funny, but it is almost certain, the RULE OF LAW.

I had experience about 10 days ago while I post an article in my blog in sina.com, a famous webside in China, talking about the unfair practice by internet provider in China, at the end of that article I added few words about free speech, after 2 or 3 days later it was deleted by someone unknown though I was told since I was very little that I have constitutional right to present my idea freely. Was it amazing? This is the reason why I open this space here.

I would suggest google, pulling out is not a good choice, since as a commercial company, besides considering profits there are many other things need to be giving a thought, for instance, fairness, justice and democracy as universally recognised.