All active Internet companies in China must stick to the country’s censorship rules

Jan.14, 2010 (Hamsayeh.Net) - US Internet based company, Google, is finding it increasingly impossible to continue operations in China, due to the Asian country’s inflexible rules over the Internet contents, which run contrary to Google’s own idea of freedom of expression.

 

The Chinese government today announced that all active Internet companies in China must stick to the country’s censorship rules. The statement was China’s first official reaction to Google’s complaints about censorship rules in China. Google already conveyed dissatisfactions with filtering rules and said it is becoming almost impossible for the company to do business and may have to pull out of China altogether.

 

The spokesperson for the Chinese cabinet, Wang Chen, warned Internet companies doing business in China, against the spread of online pornography, fraud, cyber attacks and spread of rumors and false information. ‘Our country is at a crucial stage of reform and development and Internet media must always make nurturing positive, progressive mainstream opinion an important duty.’ Reuters quoted the Chinese official as saying.

 

China as the world’s fastest growing major economy, with a population of nearly one and half billion people, aims at safeguarding its younger generation and ancient Asian cultural heritage from Western style freedom of expression which may at times contain unacceptable levels of violence, pornography and gossip.

 

Google company officials however said that if the company were unable to reach an agreement after holding talks with Chinese government, it might have to consider closing down its China operations.

 

According to statistics, most Chinese Internet users prefer to use their homegrown search engines including Google’s biggest rival Baidu.com that handles more than 60 percent of all online searches queries in China.