Young Chinese professionals working in Beijing's main
IT hub expressed a mixture of regret, anger and surprise on Tuesday
at Google's move to shut its mainland Chinese
website and reroute searches to Hong Kong.
The government lost little time in warning Google
[GOOG
557.50 
-2.50
(-0.45%)
] that its rejection of
self-censorship has incensed the ruling Communist Party, wary of
ceding any ground on freedoms for China's 384 million Internet
users.
But for many educated, and especially young, Chinese,
Google has been a well-loved website, even if homegrown rival
Baidu dominates the overall domestic market.
And many fear Google's move on its search engine could
affect its other offerings, from email to online books.
"It's a regrettable decision," said Chen Wen, 28, who
works in finance in Beijing's Zhongguancun IT district, where
Google has its China headquarters.
"I think it was inevitable though. The government was
never going to compromise on filtering," he added, as he walked
past the Google offices. "China needs this company. It's a great
loss for the country."
Google threatened on Jan. 12 to pull of China if it
could not offer an uncensored version of its Google.cn search
portal. On Monday, Google said it was rerouting users to the
company's Hong Kong site, google.com.hk, putting the burden on
Beijing to apply its own censorship filters to keep Chinese users
from seeing banned images and words.
You Chuanbo, 25, said he foresaw an unhappy outcome now
that Google had stopped censoring searches.
"That is not going to last long. The government will
just end up blocking access to all of Google," added You, who works
for a computer company and regularly uses Google, as well as
Baidu.
At the Google offices, blinds were drawn on most of the
windows, as workers scurried past a gaggle of reporters waiting
outside in the morning chill, without talking.
A few employees peered out from behind the blinds to
take pictures of the assembled groups of journalists.
One man walked up to the building to lay flowers at the
Google sign in front of the office, saying simply: "I feel very
sad". He declined to identify himself or say anymore, and walked
quietly away.
Other passersby stopped to take pictures of the
building using cameras on their mobile phones.
"I use Google in English every day for research," said
IT engineer Wang Fei. "I need it for my job, and I'm worried about
what's going to happen."
Reactions were more intense on the Internet, which has
seen many passionate postings since the Google drama began some two
months ago.
"Hong Kong is also Chinese territory. Hurry up and
leave China once and for all!" wrote one reader on the website of
the nationalist Global Times newspaper (www.huanqiu.com).
Others congratulated the company, or celebrated its
move as a major salvo in a long-running war against government
controls.
"Chinese netizens salute you Google. You are really
brave," wrote blogger Tingting on the popular sina.com.cn
portal.
Another blogger, Peng Deng, said in the end the
government would only lose its battle with censorship.
"Online, everything is possible. There's no way the
government's hackers can block the technology of billions of
users.
i salute google!
this serve as a reminder to any govt including our own
ruling regime that censorship or trying hard to filter what we
netizens should read or should not read will result in more
resentment and anger from its own citizens. normally only govt who
try hard to retain its own power will result in clamping down or
filtering the internet media.
shame on them!!
