Economy

Experts blast Google for 'politicizing' trade rules

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-06-18 19:35

BEIJING - Chinese trade and Internet experts have criticized Google's move to declare China's Internet restrictions a trade barrier, saying it was another move by Google to politicize itself.

Despite ending censorship of its Chinese-language search engine, Google.cn, and redirecting Chinese mainland users to a site in Hong Kong, Google was launching a new move to challenge China's Internet regulation, experts said.

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Professor Zheng Yongnian, director of the East Asia Institute of the National University of Singapore, said Google's attempt to link Internet regulation with trade barriers was, on the surface, an economic issue, but in essence, it challenged China's domestic affairs.

Google was "politicizing" itself again after blaming China for alleged hacker attack in January, said Zheng.

A top Google executive said earlier this month that Google was working with US and European officials to build a case to take to the World Trade Organization that would argue "Internet censorship" acted as a trade barrier, believing it could help US tech companies seeking greater access to Chinese consumers.

Robert Boorstin, Google's director of corporate and policy communications, said Google wanted to demonstrate that "censorship" resulted in fewer search pages, which limited the capacity of the country to enjoy fair trade and the ability to operate on a level playing field with competitors such as China's Baidu.

"China's Internet administration is not a system of trade policies; it is domestic policies formulated based on China's domestic laws and regulations. Even the WTO cannot intervene in this regard," said Tu Xinquan, vice president of the WTO Research Center of Beijing's University of International Business and Economics.

Tu said China's Internet administration treated domestic and foreign Internet companies equally and without discrimination, so Google's objective would fail under the WTO's anti-discrimination rules.

Hu Yanping, general manager of the privately-run Data Center of China Internet Research Institute, said it was lawful for China's government to prohibit the spread of Internet content that subverted state power, undermined national unity, infringed on national "honor" and interests, incited ethnic hatred and secession, as well as pornography and terrorism.

"Unfettered Internet freedom does not exist in any country," said Hu.

International convention allowed each country to regulate the Internet based on its own national conditions and laws, said Hu.

Google's move comes amid investigations and criticisms in other countries of alleged privacy infringement by the company.

New Zealand's Privacy Commissioner has asked police to investigate Google's gathering of personal wireless Internet data during its street view operations in New Zealand, following similar moves in other countries, including Australia and Germany.

China's first White Paper on the Internet released in early June states that within Chinese territory, the Internet is under Chinese jurisdiction and the Internet sovereignty of China should be respected and protected.