...about the new system: whether it involves taking direct cues from the government, self-selection by Google engineers, or something else.
In a way, Google's reluctance to talk about censorship and China is understandable. The Chinese government's regulations seem to be written in a deliberately vague way as to encourage internet companies to censor more than the government would like to see pulled from the internet.
In 2006, Declan McCullagh of ZDNet UK's sister site, CNET News.com, noted that Google.cn censored far more search results than seemed necessary. This appeared to be proved when Google restored access to websites such as Budweiser.com following the article, with no apparent repercussions from the Chinese government.
The The New York Times article from 2006 also noted the existence of weekly meetings between government officials and internet companies known as the 'wind-blowing' meetings; as in, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows in China, you need a bureaucrat. During those meetings, government officials would discuss upcoming events and hint at the ones they would prefer to go unnoticed, according to the article.
Relevance lost
Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square, it seems several such meetings took place. Websites across China were forced to shut down for a brief period of time in the days surrounding 4 June, which many of them sarcastically dubbed 'Chinese Internet Maintenance Day'.
Unlike Twitter, Google's YouTube and Wordpress, Google.cn was not shut down during the days surrounding the anniversary. But it was certainly far more stingy with search results than it was before the first week of June, or at present.
Whatever filter Google is using is both flexible and imprecise. Searches for obvious terms such as 'Tiananmen Square' and 'Tank Man' returned no results between approximately 3 June and 10 June, but as of last Thursday once again returned generic results unrelated to the events of 4 June, 1989.
However, during 'Chinese Internet Maintenance Week', searches on Google.cn for 'June 4 incident' (the Chinese term for the events of 4 June, 1989), 'Goddess of Democracy' and 'Tiananmen Square massacre', all returned results that one might think would be frowned upon by the Chinese government, including images of the Goddess of Democracy — a Statue of Liberty-like figure constructed by student protesters — staring defiantly at a portrait of Chairman Mao above the Tiananmen Gate.
Also during that week, a search for 'June 4 incident' on Google.cn returned (and still does) links pointing to Wikipedia's article on the subject as well as a YouTube video with bloody images of the government's crackdown on student protesters in the top two positions. A search for that term in Chinese returns what appears to be censored results with the 'According to local laws and regulations and policies, some search results are not displayed' disclaimer.
Perhaps that is why the Chinese government has announced plans to require all PCs sold in the country to have filtering software preinstalled that would block websites and even monitor keystrokes in word-processing applications. Whatever new filtering method Google has chosen, it may not be enough to satisfy the government's desire to keep certain topics out of the public eye.
Google has justified its presence in China as part of its lofty mission; this is a company that really does think it is engaged in business to better the world. But doing business in China while maintaining the moral high ground could well be more difficult than digitising all the world's information.
