what's free speech got to do with it?

i have had many interesting conversations about google's withdrawal from china. especially among my colleagues, who have varying views on the matter. i have been meaning to collect them here, and make an articulate, nuanced and compelling point about freedom of expression in tidy letters well-arranged. i even had "我♥谷歌" (i heart google") as my gchat status message for a time, which says a lot given that, as previously noted in this space gchat status messages are my current creative outlet. my genre, as it were. which may or may not implicate me in the whole google affair in some abstract artistic sense. however, i do not need share my conversations with you or make tidy points here, because i have just read an op-ed piece in the china daily which says it all. ahem:

Google's exit a deliberate plot
By Ding Yifan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-25 07:48

Editor's note: Google’s moves are combined with Washington’s tongue. The US company finally exits when it’s able to achieve neither business survival nor political aims.

Search engine leader has been part of the US' foreign strategy; its departure opens the door for domestic and foreign rivals

After two months of intense spats with the Chinese government, Google said on Monday it would shut down the mainland-based Google.cn search services and redirect the mainland's web users to Hong Kong.

In January, the world's leading search engine threatened to leave after alleged cyber-attacks in the mainland. Google said it would no longer filter its Chinese-language search results, a commitment that it agreed to when the company launched its search operations in China in January 2006.

Google's withdrawal is not a purely commercial act. The incident has from the beginning been implicated in Washington's political games with China.

A few days before Google made its announcement, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lavishly praised US Internet companies for their role in helping the Obama administration realize its foreign policies, at a lunch with chief executives of Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Clinton in particular sang of their positive role in instilling US political stances and values into Georgian and Iranian street politics to sway local public opinion.

Given that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have no access to the Chinese Internet market, the White House believes that Google alone cannot play a large role in China as it did in Georgia and Iran.

As expectated, days after the enlightening lunch, Google announced its withdrawal of its search service from the world's largest Internet market on charges that it could not tolerate strict Internet censorship required by the Chinese government. Immediately after its announcement, Clinton made a speech in support of Google's "Internet freedom" campaign.

Google has enjoyed intimate links with the Obama administration. The company was one of the four major sponsors of US President Barack Obama during his presidential campaign. It also played an important role in helping Obama's team raise election funds.

After the Obama administration was sworn in, some senior Google managerial staff members were successively recruited to important government posts. Such close connections between the two make it natural for Google to be devoted to serve the Obama administration's foreign strategy.

The search engine leader's exit from the Chinese mainland is a deliberate plot. The charge that it is opposed to China's "hacker attacks" and "Internet censorship" not only sounds reasonable, but also caters to the prejudices cultivated in the Western public toward the Chinese government. Google's case is in essence part of the US' Internet intrusive strategy worldwide under the excuse that it advocates a free Internet.

Google's accusations against China are completely groundless. The company has so far failed to submit any convincing evidence of the Chinese government-aided hacker attacks on its search engine. The censorship charges also exposed the engine's ignorance of similar practices prevailing across the world.

Google's services in Germany, France, India and other countries are also under scrutiny. Even in the US, it is not rare for some government agencies to often intrude into private e-mails under the anti-terror pretext.

Many of the US Federal and State laws and acts have clauses to restrict the flow of information on the Internet. In California, Colorado, Nevada, Louisiana and other states, public libraries, schools and Internet service providers (ISP) are required to put measures in place to block juvenile access to pornographic content. As the world's largest filtering software producer, the US has made the world's majority part of information-blocking software.

Google's Monday announcement was also a grudging commercial move amid its gloomy performances in China's market. Compared with Baidu.com, China's largest search engine, Google has lagged behind. It suffered a series of setbacks in the fastest-growing market, especially last year.

Google.cn was accused by China's Internet watchdog in January and April of last year of reserving porn contents and linking to other unhealthy websites.

Consequently, the Chinese agency made a decision in June to temporarily halt Google's outbound search services and its key words search business and urged the engine to rectify the matter.

In September, Kai-Fu Lee, who spearheaded Google's push into the mainland's market, resigned as head of Google China. Lee's departure was followed by successive resignations of other Google employees and the standoff of some of its local business.

By exiting from China, Google is by no means a political victim as it claims. Its departure is completely a failed result of competitions with other rivals in the fierce Chinese Internet market.

Google's departure is not expected to cause large losses in China's Internet search business. On the contrary, the unwise move will leave more room for China's homegrown search engines, such as Baidu, to improve and to benefit from its search technologies.

For a long time, some other foreign Internet companies, including those in the US, have been covetous of the world's fastest-growing market. Google's exit as a powerful competitor will leave them more commercial opportunities. Upon its announcement, Microsoft, which has been vying with Google for the market share in search software, issued a statement saying foreign companies should only abide by local laws and rules to keep their business thriving.

The author is a researcher at the Development Research Center under the State Council.

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reading this article reminded me of a 1994 quote from yu yu lin of the taiwan-based china times about reporting on mainland china: “If we don’t publish the lies and the rumors, there will be no news.”

when were were kids in beijing, my sisters and i used to call the china daily "the happy paper" because it was always bursting with good news. without fail and without so much as a glance at the front cover, we could accurately predict what articles we would find there on any given day. this actually became a bit of a game for us. there were three main genres: (1) china improving its relations with another country; (2) a peasant in some part of china improving the country; (3) a peasant really loving chairman mao or the party or otherwise demonstrating passionate nationalism. so on a typical morning, we could learn: (1) china improves relations with malta!; (2) farmer in guangzhou achieves record harvest!; (3) mao enthusiast saves silk scarf with the chairman’s portrait for 45 years!. not much has changed. although now the news is not always happy, even if it makes me smile sometimes. i recall an article from last august entitled "australian moves sour relations". the opening sentence was as follows: China canceled plans for Vice-Foreign Minister He Yafei to visit Australia earlier this month, reportedly due to Canberra granting a visa to Rebiya Kadeer, the mastermind of the July 5 Urumqi riot. awesome. the author later uses "masterminded" as a verb, saying "kadeer mastermineded and directed the violence". i really appreciated that use of the word of the word mastermind. almost as much as i appreciate the use of the word "expectated" in the above piece. in fact, that whole paragraph is sheer poetry and intellectual power:

As expectated, days after the enlightening lunch, Google announced its withdrawal of its search service from the world's largest Internet market on charges that it could not tolerate strict Internet censorship required by the Chinese government. Immediately after its announcement, Clinton made a speech in support of Google's "Internet freedom" campaign.

perhaps i'll further pontificate on google at some point. or perhaps i simply need to focus on having more enlightening lunches and see what comes next. or maybe it's more about masterminding my expectating free speech.