[Infowarrior] - China faces backlash from 'netizens' if Google leaves

[Richard Forno]

China faces backlash from 'netizens' if Google leaves
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 13, 2010; 9:08 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/13/AR2010011301168_pf.html
BEIJING -- Google's threat to shut down its Chinese Web site and  
offices over cyber-attacks and censorship puts the government here in  
the awkward position of choosing between its devotion to restricting  
information and the possible ire of the roughly 80 million Chinese who  
use the search engine.

Few political and Internet analysts doubt that China's government will  
stick to its tough stance and reject Google's proposal to stop  
censoring its Web site.

But Google's audience of Chinese "netizens," a few of whom placed  
flowers outside the company's offices here in Beijing, is large enough  
to make the government's likely stance a touchy one.

"This would adversely affect a lot of people, not just the technorati  
elite that is Western-oriented anyway," said Kaiser Kuo, a Chinese  
American Internet expert at Ogilvy China. "The government could face a  
serious backlash this time."

On Wednesday, the Google story was the top trending topic on a Twitter- 
like microblog situated on the Chinese site Sina.com, with about  
60,000 people weighing in, before the conversation was taken down. The  
overwhelming majority of commenters were upset at the prospect of  
losing Google's China-based service; some lashed out at the government  
while others begged Google to stay. A smaller but substantial number  
wished the company good riddance.

"This will make the extent of Chinese censorship a lot clearer even to  
ordinary Chinese people who are not aware of it," said Jeremy  
Goldkorn, who does the blog and runs an Internet research firm. He  
also runs a Web site called danwei.org, which has been blocked since  
July.

"Many people think Google should negotiate with the Chinese  
government," said Zhou Shuguang, a blogger who has done investigative  
reporting across the country and has used the name Zola.

But he said that "the withdrawal from China will wake up more Chinese  
and make more people discover that China lacks freedom on the Internet  
and the government has very strong censorship online. There are no  
benefits to people at all if Google continues to make concessions with  
Chinese authorities."

The government has backed down once before in the past year when faced  
with outcries on the Internet. It reversed its insistence that the  
makers of personal computers sold here install Green Dam, a filtering  
software. But the software, largely copied from a foreign company, was  
shown to slow down and damage computers. Huge numbers of people, most  
apolitical, protested online and the government backed down.

Another Internet campaign aimed at getting municipal governments to  
make their budgets more transparent has made some progress. The city  
of Guangdong made its budget more open, as did a district of Shanghai,  
though the Shanghai-wide municipal government refused.

But businesspeople in Beijing were pessimistic, as were many people at  
Google itself, about the prospect of a crack in what is known as the  
Great Firewall of China. "China can't lose face over this, and it's  
not going to let anybody run an open search engine," said an industry  
source close to Google.

The government has shut down or blocked thousands of Web sites before.  
Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are all blocked. Just this week, the  
General Administration of Press and Publication boasted of taking down  
136,000 non-registered Web sites and more than 1.5 million pieces of  
"bad information." It also said that it shut down 15,000 pornographic  
Web sites.

For now, the government has said only that it would seek more  
information from Google. Just about the only comment in official  
channels came in the form of a signed opinion article on the People's  
Daily Web site, a style of editorial that does not carry the well- 
considered weight of an unsigned editorial, which is usually vetted by  
top Chinese leaders. The article compared Google to a "spoiled child"  
and said that even if it stormed out of China, it would be back  
because of the importance of the Chinese market.

Other pro-government comments online said that Google, which lags far  
behind the Chinese-based search engine known as Baidu, was simply  
dressing up a business decision in moral clothing. Baidu has about two- 
thirds of the market. Some independent analysts have estimated a 30  
percent or so market share for Google, but well-placed industry  
sources said the actual number is closer to 20 percent and has never  
been more than 26 percent.

Dan Brody, who set up Google's China office and who now runs an  
Internet media investment firm here called Koolanoo Group, estimates  
that Google has about $300 million to $400 million in revenue in China.

Brody said that that revenue pales next to the revenue Google earns  
elsewhere. Moreover, he said, if Google loses even a small percentage  
of users in Europe or the United States because it is seen as making  
too many compromises with China's government, then the company could  
lose much more revenue than it's earning in China.

"From a business and moral perspective, user trust in the West is so  
important to them," Brody said.

Another industry source close to Google said on condition of anonymity  
that although the firm's market share has lagged, "this isn't  
something being used as a smokescreen."

The company has clashed with the Chinese government since it set up  
google.cn in 2005. Google agreed to remove information that China's  
leaders might find too sensitive. But Google and the government  
differed over what should fall into that category.

Last summer the company was sharply criticized in state-run media for  
providing access to "pornography." The industry source said that in  
addition to well-publicized incidents, Chinese officials were making  
weekly demands for items to be removed. He said when the cyber attacks  
were discovered "it was the last straw."

If Google closes down its Chinese site, or if the Chinese government  
closes it down, Chinese users could still try to use the U.S.-based  
site. But China's government could impede access. Currently, the U.S.  
site works more slowly and access to many pages is blocked.

Where would that leave the Chinese market and China's estimated 370  
million Internet users?

The closing of Google's China site would boost Baidu and Sina, most  
industry analysts said, and hurt Google in the long-running rivalry.

Despite expensive outreach campaigns at universities and secondary  
schools, Google has had trouble catching up to the domestic  
competitors. Analysts say Chinese Internet users favor the crowded,  
busy sites of Baidu and Sina to the no-nonsense sparseness of Google's  
homepage. Baidu and Sina also feature bulletin boards and music  
downloading services that are not available on Google. Moreover,  
surveys have shown that most Chinese have trouble spelling Google or  
don't know its Chinese name, guge, which means valley song.

There is also a nationalistic component to the other companies'  
success. A Baidu ad played on those sentiments by portraying a  
bumbling foreigner at a wedding speaking Mandarin poorly. A character  
known as Tang Baihu then talks circles around the foreigner, who is  
dressed awkwardly in Chinese traditional clothing.

Google China, which was based in Beijing's high-tech corridor near the  
main universities, has also suffered from high turnover over the past  
five years and the company recently was forced to replace a number of  
its locally hired, Mandarin-speaking staff with managers from its  
headquarters in California. The head of Google China, Kai-Fu Lee, who  
was recruited away from Microsoft, quit in September.

Ironically, however, the departure of Google is no guarantee of  
harmony on the Chinese Internet given the vast scope of content on the  
Web. This week Baidu's site was attacked by hackers who claimed to be  
from Iran.

"This is a lose-lose solution for both Google and China," said Hu  
Yong, associate professor specializing in online media at the School  
of Journalism and Communication at Beijing University.

"For Google, China is a huge market with very big business potential  
because China has a large number of netizens," Hu said. "For Chinese  
netizens, it's a bad result as well. A search engine is very important  
for the free transportation of information online. And we need  
competition," he added, otherwise "the number information sources will  
decrease."

Post researchers Zhang Jie and Wang Juan contributed to this report.