January 23rd, 2010, 12:54AM in Business by Marc LequimeView Comments
Google China: Could end US/China Relations
Things appear to be heating up surrounding the whole [blippr]Google[/blippr] China controversy. China has now condemned the USA’s criticism over its internet controls, calling them ‘groundless’ and stating it could harm the relations between the two countries.
US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton called on Thursday for China to lift its internet restrictions and heavy laws against the spreading of content on the internet. She’s also urged Beijing to investigate Google’s complaints, that the hacking of GMail accounts had originated in China.
Ma Zhaoxu, Foreign Ministry spokesman, said the US government should “respect the facts” and stop “making groundless accusations against China”, ironically.
In fact, funnily enough, he went on to say “the US has criticised China’s policies to administer the internet, and “this runs contrary to the facts and is harmful to China-US relations.” If China don’t restrict freedom on the internet, why do they arrest bloggers? Just a thought.
Arguments such as these, caused over things even as simple as Google, could create a disastrous relationship between US and China.
Google China has been around since 2006 – at which point the internet giant agreed to censor searches for banned topics in China, for example the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, or Falun Gong.
Recently, Google got sick of all this censoring – and apparently, because of several attacks against their service, want to offer a completely uncensored search engine to the Chinese public.
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