China's search engine censorship continues

Google and Yahoo in unholy alliances.

For several years the Chinese regime has been oppressing their citizens by censoring what they get to access online. Now internet giants like Google and Yahoo help facilitate this oppression in order to gain access to the Chinese market.

By Lars Våge, InternetBrus

Search engine censorship

(February 27 2005) One of the strategies of the Chinese regime has been to cut off access to international search engines like Google and Altavista from time to time.

Now they also censor in a way that makes it impossible to get results for certain search phrases. This is not only the case with government approved search engines like the popular Baidu.com.

The scary thing is that the regime has succeeded in putting such pressure on global search engines like Google and Yahoo that they have conceded to make certain information inaccessible in some of their Chinese versions.

The organization Reporters Without Frontiers (RSF) has reported about this on at least three occasions during the last six months. RSF has demanded that Google clean up its act, but this has not been heeded in any way.

The case of Zhao Ziyang

The latest “victim” of this search engine censoring is the recently deceased Zhao Ziyang, who was China’s leader from 1980 to 1987.

Perhaps you do not remember him and you are not meant to either. He was arrested and placed under house arrest. This was because he had, though admittedly too late, tried to stop the Chinese military’s intervention on the Tiananmen Square in 1989. The intervention resulted in the massacre of hundreds of Chinese students.

When Zhao passed away after almost 16 years of house arrest, the Chinese regime didn’t want his death to cause any commotion like demonstrations at his funeral. So they put the search engines that Chinese surfers may use, like Baidu.com and the Chinese version of Yahoo, under pressure.

The result was that Zhao’s name produced no hits in these search engines. You can read more about this in RSF’s press release News black-out on death of former top leader Zhao Ziyang.

After Zhao’s funeral, the government controlled press agency Xinhua News Agency simply stated that "In the political turbulence which took place in the late spring and early summer of 1989, Comrade Zhao committed serious mistakes".

This can be read in the article Remains of Zhao Ziyang cremated in Beijing of January 29th, which can be found in English for instance at the largest Chinese web site in English, chinadaily.com.

Last fall, late in November, the Russian news agency Interfax and the Italian AGI brought stories of how China censored the newly launched Chinese version of Google News. This time too, RSF reacted and demanded in a press release that Google stop helping the Chinese regime in the search engine censoring.

Google and the Chinese market

To be at all allowed to make a Chinese version of Google News, certain news sources had to be excluded. Google’s head of corporate ethics, Andrew McLaughlin, did not see this as a problem.

The argument was that it would do no good for the Chinese to get news search results that they would be unable to access anyway due to the internet censoring. Now isn't that a very convenient way of reasoning!

Last summer RSF wrote a letter to the American government, drawing their attention to the fact that large American search engines like Yahoo and Google were helping the Chinese regime in their efforts to limit their citizen’s right to free speech.

For example, according to RSF, a search in the Chinese Yahoo for “Free Tibet” or Falungong” brings up manipulated, unreliable hits if any at all. Many more search terms are forbidden in the Chinese search engine Baidu.

It is interesting to note that Google spent 10 million dollars investing in Baidu last summer. Baidu President Robin Li expressed his content and felt that this would help investors worldwide appreciate the value of Baidu.

He was obviously right. Chinese media, Financial Times, AP, and Reuters now report that Baidu is planning an IPO on NYSE or NASDAQ later this year.

The truth behind Accoona

Another example of cooperation between a US search engine and China is the newly launched search engine Accoona.

This search engine claims to utilize advanced artificial intelligence, whatever that means: "Using a complex algorithm that recalculates the meaning of words, Accoona better understands the user's search query."

This doesn’t tell me much.

It should be added that Accoona also has an extensive database of business information that can be searched separately and Accoona is clearly interesting for this reason.

Behind Accoona you find an American company called China Communications Corporation in New Jersey. But Accoona was launched in cooperation with China Daily Information Company and with backing from the Chinese Government.

ABC News reported about this unholy alliance that: “A crack software development team backed by the former head of Compaq Computer and China's information ministry will unveil plans on Thursday for a Web search system that can locate 30 million businesses worldwide”.

Evidently there is so much Chinese money to be made for the mentioned search engine corporations that they are willing to make a lot of compromises.

Show them how you feel

About Yahoo! and Google RSF clearly states that "the two firms are making compromises that directly threaten freedom of expression".

Both businesses were once small grassroots projects that gained cult status online. Today they are internet giants traded at the stock exchange, and apparently without hesitation they partner up with one of the worst oppressors in the world.

Perhaps it is time to start using alternative search engines like Gigablast or Exalead instead?

See also: Google censors sites in China (Pandia September 2004)

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