The Chinese government has said it will stand firm with regard to censorship of the internet following Google’s threat to withdraw from the country.
A report in the Financial Times this morning quoted Wang Chen, the head of the State Council Information Office and deputy head of the Communist party’s propaganda department, as saying internet media must “live up to their responsibility of maintaining internet security”, which includes censoring content.
Yesterday Google announced it would consider pulling out of the country if the Chinese government refuses to let it operate without censorship. The move follows a series of attacks by hackers on Google email accounts owned by human rights campaigners, which were discovered to have originated from China.
In a statement issued on a government website, Chen said: “The importance different countries attach to internet security is different. We must …, from the angle of national security, information security and cultural security, actively respond to the challenges in internet security and … find a path of internet development with Chinese characteristics.”
At no point did Chen mention Google by name, but his comments have been seen as the first response to the American company’s public threat.
When Google began operating Google.cn in 2006 it had to agree to censorship of some online content in order to stay within the law. The company said it felt “the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open internet, outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results”.
However, since the end of 2008, the government in China has taken a harder line with regard to content it deems to be either pornographic or harmful. Over time this has included thousands of blogs and websites, many of which level criticism at the government. Social networking sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have also been banned.
Tags: censorship, Chinese government, Google
[...] response, China said it intends to stand firm over censorship of certain internet content and that media companies must “live up to their [...]