China says its cyberspace laws are non-negotiable and foreign companies must obey the rules.

 

 

March 23, 2010 (Hamsayeh.Net) - San Francisco-based company Goolge has finally shut down its main Chinese-language search engine operations on the Chinese mainland due to widespread censorships by Chinese authorities.

 

China says its cyberspace laws are non-negotiable and foreign companies must obey the rules. Google will keep some research and development, and sales sections in China, but most of the intenet users will be redirected to the company’s Chinese-language service in Hong Kong where there seem to be more internet freedom at this time.

 

A company executive, said, ‘In terms of Google's wider business operations, we intend to continue R&D work in China and also to maintain a sales presence there, though the size of the sales team will obviously be partially dependent on the ability of mainland Chinese users to access Google.com.hk.’

 

The giant company enjoying a strong backing from the US government officials has voiced strong dissatisfactions with China’s use of internet filtering systems which block access to unwanted or politically incorrect contents posted on some of the Chinese-language web-pages. Some of the features offered by Google while strongly opposed by the Chinese authorities are the email accounts for human-rights activists. China censored those email accounts and the move angered the Goggle ever since.

 

Charles Drummond, a company officials said, ‘We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement.’ Google has about 700 people working in China.