China Responds To Google: Go To Hell

Courtesy of Henry Blodget at Clusterstock/Business Insider

China Military China’s initial public response to Google’s threat is in, and it’s what one would have expected: Go to hell.

Now the two can start negotiating quietly behind the scenes.

We still expect this war to be resolved in a compromise in which both parties declare victory and reserve the right to kill each other later. There’s a substantial chance, however, that Google will be forced to actually follow through on its threat and leave the country. (Backing down at this point would be a disaster).

There’s no chance, meanwhile, that the Chinese government will allow itself to appear to be pushed around by a pissant Internet company. So Google had to have expected this.

FT: One of China’s top censors on Thursday reaffirmed the state’s commitment to monitoring the internet, showing no signs of compromising in the face of Google’s threat to quit the country.

Wang Chen, head of the State Council Information Office and deputy head of the Communist party’s propaganda department, said internet media “must live up to their responsibility of maintaining internet security”, including censoring content.

“We must do our best to intensify self-discipline among internet media to guarantee internet security… Online media must treat the creation of a positive mainstream opinion environment as an important duty,” he said.

"A positive mainstream opinion environment." And we thought our media was bad.