
A new approach to China: an update - GVRV
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-approach-to-china-update.html
======
jsm386
Pretty frightening that they need to reiterate this (they mentioned this in
the original announcement): _Finally, we would like to make clear that all
these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the
United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held
responsible for them. Despite all the uncertainty and difficulties they have
faced since we made our announcement in January, they have continued to focus
on serving our Chinese users and customers. We are immensely proud of them._

~~~
analyst74
If the Chinese government is going to hold some google employees responsible
(for whatever), do you think reiterating that statement is going do anything?

Don't be partisan.

~~~
jrockway
China is not stupid. They already look bad, and retaliating by ruining a few
Google employee's lives is not going to make them look better. When China
starts alienating the western companies, they are simply going to leave,
leaving China with nothing. That would not be good for them, so I think they
will try and avoid it.

~~~
c23gooey
The Chinese Government simply does not care what others think of it -
especially the west.

All you need to do is look at the case of Stern Hu and Rio Tinto to find out
how much the Chinese Government cares about its reputation amongst western
corporations.

~~~
light3
Interestingly, Stern Hu pleaded guilty to bribery recently:

[http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Stern-
Hu-...](http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Stern-Hu-pleads-
guilty-to-bribery-report-pd20100322-3S7SU?OpenDocument)

~~~
dublinclontarf
Are you surprised?

How long do you think it took for them to beat it out of him?

~~~
light3
We'll have to wait for the sentence to be handed down, if any jail time /
execution is handed, that would really be interesting!

------
lotharbot
IMO, the most valuable thing to come out of all of this is the China apps
status dashboard:

<http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en>

tells us what China is currently allowing, blocking, or partially blocking.

~~~
jessriedel
What do "Web" and "Sites" mean? I assume one tells us whether China is
blocking Google search results.

~~~
quizbiz
Web = Search Results; Sites = A Google Apps product and personal websites
hosted by Google

~~~
jessriedel
Thanks.

------
jbellis
The last paragraph says a lot between the lines. "Please don't put our
employees in jail."

~~~
kylec
They really should offer to relocate them to the US

~~~
barrkel
Unless Google has closer ties to the government than I was aware of, they
don't necessarily have that power.

~~~
TallGuyShort
It's relatively easy for a company to relocate employees, as long as it has a
reasonable need for specifically those people. If it wants skilled employees
with a native-level knowledge of the language and culture, it wouldn't be hard
to relocate them. Having said that, it's entirely possible that those
employees don't want to be relocated. If my company's relations soured in my
country, I'd rather quit and find a new job then leave for the company.

~~~
barrkel
Re relocating to the US, specifically: I've been through the H-1B visa process
- I have the visa, but I never actually jumped. Quite apart from times when
it's oversubscribed and becomes a lottery, there are any number of small
hurdles you could fail on.

But if it's relocation to anywhere not-China, then yes, that ought not to be
too difficult.

~~~
jrockway
There are visas other than H-1B.

And, Google just needs to get the people out of Mainland China. If their
safety is in danger for actions that they had no control over, I'm sure some
country will give them asylum.

Or maybe China realizes that it lost, and will model the rest of the country
after Hong Kong. (Remember, Hong Kong _is_ technically mainland China.)

------
TorKlingberg
It is possible the Chinese government will only partially block google.com.hk.
This it how it has often worked with Wikipedia. You can browse the site, but
as soon as any forbidden phrase is passed over the TCP connection it is cut.
Then all access to the site from your IP is blocked for a while. This makes
the service very intermittent, and makes it difficult for users to distinguish
between censorship and overloaded servers. There is also the question of what
will happen to the google.cn domain, as all websites in China are required to
have an ICP license from a government agency.

------
chaosmachine
_"It's entirely legal ... We very much hope that the Chinese government
respects our decision"_

Not much of a leg to stand on. I wouldn't want to be a Google employee in
China right now.

~~~
potatolicious
My main fear is that China will use this opportunity, as the Chinese proverb
goes: "kill the rooster to warn the monkey" - i.e., arrest/charge a few
higher-level Google China people (Chinese citizens, they won't touch
Americans).

Public opinion in China re: Google is very, very much sided with the Chinese
government - people in general believe Google to be bullies pushing their
American-style beliefs down their throats, and the people I've spoken to
almost unanimously think that it's about damned time Google left China.

If a few key people are arrested/charged for conspiring to violate the law, it
would be a major PR victory for the PRC domestically ("government stands up to
Western bullying tactics, no safe refuge for collaborators" and the such), not
to mention potentially warding off other companies trying to make the same
stand.

Interesting times.

~~~
zellux
I'm just wondering where you get this public opinion, which is quite different
from what I heard. And I'm in Shanghai, China.

~~~
potatolicious
See my other post below, but to add:

A lot of what I'm basing this observation on is poking around in Xiaonei
(Chinese Facebook knockoff), the chatter in there is alarmingly (and almost
militaristic) anti-west. This may be because the part of the social graph I
was looking at was mostly upper-class Chinese (being that my main "in" with
the Chinese is international students/expats, who are much better off that
most).

It is likely (in fact, most probably) that the working class Chinese would
have entirely different views.

~~~
c1sc0
Very interesting that you mention militaristic. Been observing similar
attitudes and frankly it scares me.

~~~
lhuang
Just nationalism.... the tea baggers are just as vitriolic...

~~~
potatolicious
Not sure why you got downvoted - I would say the comparison is apt. I've seen
some disturbing things on Xiaonei, things like a map of the USA with a
gigantic PRC flag sticking out of it, and other bits of aggressive
nationalistic posturing.

------
garply
Hey Googlers on HN, I live in China and access Gmail from my local connection.
Where is my Gmail data located?

~~~
EricBurnett
Disclaimer: this is not an official answer from Google, and while I have
worked there I do not at present.

There are data centers around the world, however Google only stores sensitive
data in locations where it can guarantee security and privacy[1]. Quoting from
an official blog post from 2006,

"Protection of user privacy -- We will not maintain on Chinese soil any
services, like email, that involve personal or confidential data. This means
that we will not, for example, host Gmail or Blogger, our email and blogging
tools, in China."

What this means is that your data could be stored in a number of countries,
which will include a copy in the U.S. and _not_ include a copy in China.

[1] [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/testimony-internet-
in...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/testimony-internet-in-
china.html)

------
houseabsolute
In some ways I can't believe they actually did it.

------
orangecat
That's actually brilliant. They're both complying with the letter of the law
and forcing the Chinese government to actively shut them down. I hope all
their non-Chinese employees have exited the country...

------
garply
Some things I used to be able to search for on google.cn, but are now filtered
by my ISP (via connection reset):

[http://www.google.com.hk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...](http://www.google.com.hk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=六四)
(6/4)

[http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=zh-
CN&source=hp&q...](http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=zh-
CN&source=hp&q=天安门+1989) (Tian'anmen 1989)

I'm sure a native Chinese can give a better list. Superficially at least, it
looks like ISP level censorship has gotten worse.

~~~
tomerico
Isn't it a little scary to search this stuff in China?

~~~
ugh
Probably not. China is not North Korea, I would guess nobody really cares what
you are searching for.

(Conceptually it’s probably not that much different from children watching
M-rated movies. The government in the US doesn’t care, even if they know
children are watching that stuff. Police won’t come busting through your door.
They are only interested in making it impossible for children to buy that
stuff. The problem in China is of course that much more stuff is blocked and
not just for children.)

~~~
wqfeng
Definitely not. It's just a connection reset. People won't be put in jail
because they have searched these.

------
SlyShy
And all this time analysts were saying Google would stand down from its
principles on this matter. I quite like this page:
<http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en> as well as the general tenor of
these actions.

------
ErrantX
For all the rights and wrongs of such a decision; kudos to them for going
through with their threat.

~~~
dawgyDoo
I thought their threat was to leave. They haven't exactly left. It's more like
they've thrown more doodoo into fan.

------
startingup
I have some colleagues and good friends in Beijing, most of them coming from
various provinces to Beijing for their jobs - they are not high up in the
ladder socio-economically. The impression I get is that they love China (to
the extent of choosing not to go abroad to live and work), but resent the
party's overbearing ways. They are not going to go out and protest, but that
doesn't mean they like their government much either. They tell me banned
publications are fairly widely available, if you know how to find them, and
many of them are fairly knowledgeable about stuff the party doesn't want them
to know about.

~~~
mjhnghfh
Funnily enough I have colleagues in the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand,
Canada etc who feel exactly the same way.

------
euroclydon
Could this be the first big salvo in a protectionist effort against Chinese
imports? It certainly provides some political cover for the Treasury to
declare CN a currency manipulator in the next couple of weeks.

Are there any projections out there of how tariffs would affect technology the
markets?

~~~
mbreese
The two things are completely unrelated. How does Google ceasing to self-
censor results in mainland China have anything to do with the Treasury's
response to Chinese currency policy? It would be a mistake to conflate the
two.

~~~
euroclydon
I realize they are unrelated, but it takes only one fanned spark to ignite
nationalism. It's one thing for China to down a spy plane, but what Google is
doing is taking the high ground. It just feels different, like the environment
is being prepped for more severe action.

[edit] And I don't even mean a coordinated salvo, but rather the type of event
that historians will one day look back on, as a turning point.

------
zellux
<http://www.google.cn> now redirects to <http://www.google.com.hk/>, and there
is a line of message saying _欢迎您来到谷歌搜索在中国的新家_ , which means "Welcome to the
new home for Google Search in China".

------
jboydyhacker
Whatever this leads Google needs to stay in China even if they ban it in Hong
Kong.

Supposedly one of the reasons Google's stand has been so "principled" is
because of Sergey Brin's early years in the Soviet Union.

That begs the question though, if the Soviet Union had Google and the internet
would it have collapsed sooner or would it have taken longer?

------
DEinspanjer
I think it is funny that I am visiting China right now and I cannot see the
article because googleblog.blogspot.com is blocked. I'll have to bookmark it
to be read when I get back home.

~~~
vorg
I found a copy of the text on: <http://en.mye.ir/a-new-approach-to-china-an-
update/> available from within China.

------
queensnake
I haven't seen anyone mention, how long it'll take for China to ban Google
from Hong Kong. I understand it runs the place already (indirectly maybe),
sure they'll have to change laws, but I haven't gotten the impression that
that's an obstacle.

~~~
quant18
_sure they'll have to change laws, but I haven't gotten the impression that
that's an obstacle._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_Basic_Law_Article_23>

Last time China tried to change a law here, 500,000 people marched through the
central business district, the secretaries for security and finance resigned,
and the law never got passed. So no.

------
neilk
I hope they gave Google.cn employees a chance to resign. Ideally, a month or
two ago.

~~~
algorias
Most employees can resign at any time they wish. Not sure why Google would
need to explicitly "give them a chance". Am I missing something obvious?

~~~
neilk
Because when you are about to publicly challenge a totalitarian government, it
might be a good idea to tell the staff in advance.

For Google, the big question about establishing operations in China was always
the hostage scenario. If they can jail your people, can you really be brave
about censorship? To their credit Google isn't backing down, but the risks are
real and they ought to reiterate this to their staff beforehand.

------
mattjung
Respect to Google! But I'm afraid the servers in Hong Kong will be blocked
very soon.

