Google Side-Steps China Censorship

Google Inc., following through on a promise to stop censoring search results in China, began redirecting traffic from its Chinese home page to the company’s unfiltered Hong Kong site, outside of mainland China.

Google is "totally wrong" to stop censoring its searches, the official Xinhua news agency said after the announcement.

Google will offer uncensored results in simplified Chinese, designed for users on the mainland, according to a blog post today. The move follows a two-month dispute between the company and the Chinese government over censorship.

“The Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement,” Google said on the blog. “We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced -- it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China.”

The question now is whether China will block access to the site from the mainland, said Aaron Kessler, an analyst at Kaufman Brothers LP in San Francisco. The Hong Kong site isn’t subject to the same censorship requirements as mainland sites. For example, it was displaying several results on the search term “Tiananmen Square massacre” today.

While part of China, Hong Kong has a separate government and economy -- a legacy of its role as a British territory until 1997. At the time of the handover, China promised to preserve Hong Kong’s capitalist system and free press for another 50 years.

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Economic Tensions Escalating Between China and U.S.

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) – China on Wednesday rejected criticism of its exchange rate policies and said it was being made a "scapegoat" after the U.S. Congress threatened to slap duties on Chinese goods unless it revalues its yuan.

Many U.S. lawmakers, with strong backing from economists, believe the yuan is undervalued by at least 25 percent, giving Chinese companies an unfair edge in trade -- one seen as more critical now that the U.S. economy is struggling to recover from the worst downturn since the 1930s.

The heat is rising quickly in the long-running dispute over China's exchange rate regime, with a bipartisan bill introduced on Tuesday in the U.S. Senate that aims to press Beijing to let its currency rise in value.

With key committees of the U.S. Congress setting hearings this month on the currency issue, the bill's co-author, Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, said his move to "wake up this administration" enjoyed broad support in Congress.

"The time is right. Everyone is fed up," he said.

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