When Google announced plans to continue operating its search engine in China, but to circumvent the government’s filtering rules by redirecting traffic to Hong Kong, it seemed pretty plain that the Chinese authorities wouldn’t be pleased. And they’re not.
In the first official response to Google’s announcement, a Chinese official told the state news service Xinhua that the move is “totally wrong,” and that it violates the promises Google made when it set up shop there in the first place. Datamation has the story.
A Chinese official has blasted Google’s decision to offer unfiltered Web content to its citizens on the mainland, calling the move “totally wrong” and saying it violates Google’s written agreement to abide by Chinese laws.
The harsh words are the first official reaction to Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) announcement yesterday that it would redirect traffic from Google.cn to its Hong Kong site, Google.com.hk, which is exempt from China’s Internet filtering restrictions.
That decision came two months after Google first threatened to pull up stakes in China if the government didn’t relax its censorship requirements. At the time, Google dropped word that it had been subject to a series of cyber attacks targeting the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights advocates. Google said it had traced the attacks to China, a charge that Chinese authorities have vigorously denied.
“Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks,” an unnamed Chinese official told the state news service Xinhua.