China blocks Google searches
2010-03-24 18:13
Beijing - China's internet authorities blocked many Google searches for terms and websites deemed politically sensitive on Wednesday, one day after the US internet giant diverted its main Chinese website to an uncensored one in Hong Kong.
Searches in Chinese on the www.google.com.hk website were blocked for terms such as the Charter '08 for democratic reform and for the name of the charter's main organizer, jailed dissident writer Liu Xiaobo.
Other blocked Chinese search terms included "Dalai", for the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama, and the banned spiritual movements Zhong Gong and Falun Gong.
Amnesty International's main website was the top result in an English search for "amnesty", but China's "Great Firewall" blocked the link to the website.
An English search returned 22 000 results for pictures of "tank man", the lone protester who was photographed blocking the approach of a column of tanks into Beijing's Tiananmen Square during China's 1989 democracy protests.
Politicising commercial issues
Most results on the first page were copies of the famous "tank man" image, but the links to many of them, such as one on the US-based China Digital Times, were inaccessible.
Chinese picture and text searches for Hu Jia, another jailed dissident, gave similar results with many blocked links.
Links were also blocked from both google.com and google.com.hk to Google's English-language blog, in which David Drummond, its chief legal officer, announced the company's "new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk".
Chinese state media and a representative of China's internet regulator accused Google of "politicising commercial issues" by suspending its main Chinese website and redirecting it to the Google site in Hong Kong.
But the US State Department and China's Foreign Ministry both played down the potential impact of Google's move on diplomatic relations.
"This was a business decision by Google... as to the issue of internet freedom and the flow of information around the world," State Department spokesperson PJ Crowley said on Tuesday.
Block possible
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Qin Gang also said Google's decision was "just an individual commercial case".
"I cannot see its impact on China-US relations unless someone wants to politicise it," Qin said.
Google's move followed its announcement on January 12 that it would stop censoring its Chinese search results after discovering a cyber attack that originated in China and targeted Google servers as well as those of other Western companies. The attacks included attempts to compromise Chinese human rights activists' e-mail accounts.
Google said it would continue to conduct research and development work in China and also continue to operate its advertising sales teams in the country. But it conceded that the Chinese government could decide to block access to Google's Hong Kong site.
- SAPA