Google has finally announced that it may after all pull it’s services out of China. This is a kind of revolutionary event that has the power to shake governments more than people like Barack Obama and Gordon Brown can. Noticeably, US State Department is openly supporting Google in dictating terms to the Chinese government.
The recent Google statement comes in the wake of events whereby Gmail accounts of certain Chinese human rights activists were hacked into and monitored by China.
Last November, when Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, made his maiden visit to China and espoused the ‘universal’ values of freedom of speech, he was humiliatingly ignored by President Hu Jintao.
The tug of war between Google and China continues from last year when Google’s chief executive Kaifu Lee was forced to leave. China maintains that Google’s desire to reign supreme in Chinese search market doesn’t care about Chinese censorship policies.
Now the old issue of Chinese isolationism comes back to haunt them. They want to live away and separately from the rest of the world. But the recent decade of economic growth and boom in exports is all due to globalisation and open-ness and the censorship attitude threatens to push China back to a wall they can’t afford to stare.