BEIJING APPEARS UNCERTAIN ON GOOGLE

飞雪寒冰

Internet users experienced wild swings in access to results on Google's Chinese search engine yesterday, in a sign that Beijing was struggling to decide on the level of censorship for the site after Google moved the service out of the mainland.

At around 10am, users in Beijing were confronted with browser errors for every Chinese term they entered. Searches for “Xinhua News Agency”, “Ministry of Commerce”, and “Ministry of Health” returned a blank screen. Some 30 minutes later the problem had disappeared.

An employee of Perfect World, the online gaming company, reported that a search for company information on google.com.hk had failed to return any results.

A little later, however, other users found links they could have never have dreamt of when Google was still self-censoring its Chinese search results. A search for “Foreign Ministry” in Chinese returned the Foreign Ministry of the People's Republic of China as top result, followed by the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

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Beijing claims the self-ruled island as part of its territory and normally refuses to recognise that a separate state exists there. All references to Taiwan are purged from the web in China.

Censorship in China is often erratic. This is partly a strategy to make internet users and website administrators wary about what content they post or allow online. An executive at a Chinese internet portal said applying varying levels of censorship could also be a strategy aimed at discouraging Chinese “netizens” from using the site.

Diverging views between government departments are also influencing Beijing's reaction. That became clear soon after Google's announcement of its decision on Tuesday.

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While state media quoted an official at the State Department Information Office as saying that Google was “totally wrong to stop censoring”, the Foreign Ministry later in the day played down the development and said it was an individual commercial case.

“There will be a negative impact on Google in the short term as long as there is uncertainty over access but, in the longer term, the risk is going to recede,” said Li Zhi, search engine specialist at Analysys, an internet research firm.

Google's move to redirect Chinese users to an uncensored search service in Hong Kong also presents Beijing with a dilemma.

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In theory, the government could retaliate by blocking all Google sites outside the mainland's borders – something that could include even g-mail. China has blocked many western internet sites over the past year, especially those with social networking components and user-generated content such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

But many observers in China believe Beijing is reluctant to block Google because it could harm China's image. “I bet many people in the west hope that will happen to give you another pretext for demonising China,” said Liu Jun, a student, on his QQ instant messaging group.

Analysts said the government was likely to monitor Chinese users' search habits on the new site for a period of time before settling for more predictable blocking practices.