What's the problem with China and Google

The New York Times has an article “Google's China Problem (and China's Google Problem)” that provides a glimpse of the technology, politics of Chinese Internet censorship. It is interesting to learn Chinese competitors (such as Baidu) took the advantage of censorship to make Chinese government shut down accesses to Google in 2002. Communist party is good at psychology tactic: “American Internet firms expect the government to hand them an official blacklist of sites and words they must censor … The government's preferred method seems to be to leave the companies guessing, then to call up occasionally with angry demands that a Web page be taken down in 24 hours.”

The article also states that Google believes ‘merely by improving access to information in an authoritarian country, it would be doing good’. Indeed, millions of young Chinese are blogging and chatting about their favorite celebrities. Does that mean free speech? I am afraid not. They will recognize a great nation led by perfect leaders through censored information. In the article: ‘A query for "Tiananmen Square" omitted many iconic photos of the protest and the crackdown. Instead, it produced tourism pictures of the square lighted up at night and happy Chinese couples posing before it’. It seems to me Google will soon secure a profitable Chinese market, and Internet won't bring a magical political reform to China.