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A campaign by Human Rights in China.
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Incorporating Responsibility: 2008 A campaign by Human Rights in China. |
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Google.cn: Not too late for corporate leadership On January 25, 2006, Google Inc. launched google.cn, a Chinese version of its search engine which filters and self-censors results from searches on terms deemed politically sensitive by the Chinese authorities. Google joins a host of other leading technology companies, including Microsoft and Yahoo, who have bowed to Chinese government demands in attempts to gain ground among the growing Chinese online population. Rather than exercising corporate leadership, these companies and others have instead engaged in "a race to the bottom," making concessions that curtail freedom of expression and access to information in China. Additional analysis on Google and google.cn can be found in the "Filtering the searches" section.
HRIC Comparative Survey On January 26, 2006, HRIC conducted several Web search queries on google.com (both English and Simplified Chinese language interfaces), google.cn, and google.com.tw. Google.com.tw, Google's Taiwanese search engine, was included in order to present a wider spectrum of results from another search engine which also targets Chinese-speaking users. HRIC looked at both general subjects and current 'hot topics'. The searches used both English and Chinese search terms, concentrating on the latter as the majority of search engine users would be entering Chinese queries. It is worth noting that google.cn offers four search options. Users can search among:
Certain searches (for example, Chinese language searches on the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the Dalai Lama and Falun Gong) restrict users to using the "Web sites in China" search; users are apparently not able to search all Web sites on the Internet for these terms. The following chart compares the results of HRIC's tests, conducted from outside of China, looking in general at the first ten results of each query. Queries such as "Tiananmen" and "Falun Gong" are obvious to be censored, and were confirmed to be by HRIC and other group's findings. However, one of the greater threats of the Chinese government's control on information through recognized resources such as Google lie in the reduced spectrum of information available for other sensitive topics and issues that affect mainland Chinese citizens. For example, attempts to find diverse discussions and information on Re-education through Labor (劳动教养), investigative reports from 'rights defenders' groups (维权), unbiased information on China's use of the death penalty (死刑), and more. Although queries on such English language terms as 'Tiananmen' and 'Dalai Lama' appear to return diverse results, it should be remembered that the majority of mainland Chinese users will not be searching on English language queries. In addition, not all Web sites presented as results in google.cn searches will be reachable from within mainland China, due to additional filtering and censorship.
// ENDNOTES [1] 维权 approximately translates to 'rights defenders', and refer to domestic Chinese groups or individuals who work to better basic rights. These groups are generally more tolerated and accepted than traditional human rights groups. GWMQ (公民维权) recently published an investigative report (English, Chinese) on the Shanwei incident of December 2005, where armed forces suppressed a local protest over land rights. [2] Reeducation Through Labor (laodong jiaoyang) is a system of extra-judicial detention and punishment administratively imposed on those who are deemed to have committed minor offenses. It effectively provides the Chinese authorities with a tool to deprive people of their liberty without giving them access to legal counsel or trial. HRIC published a brief on Reform of the Reeducation through Labor System in 2005. [3] chinesenewsnet.com is a widely read overseas Chinese new source. [4] Gao Wenqian's Zhou Enlai's Later Years is recent, critical biography on former Premier Zhou Enlai; the book has been banned in China. John Pomfret's book review is available online. [5] Ding Kai Wen's New Concepts of Lin Biao Incident attempts to chronicle the truth behind the motives and rationale of Lin Biao. Lin Biao was a high ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader who has since been vilified by the CCP for his involvement in an assassination attempt on Mao Zedong. A short biography of Lin Biao is available at Wikipedia. [6] Chinese language Web sites on Tibetan independence, including the Chinese Web sites of International Campaign for Tibet, Tibet Times, and The Office of Tibet are filtered from google.cn searches. [7] While the appearance of The Government of Tibet in Exile's Web site among google.cn's search results by searching under the English query may be considered a victory in circumventing Google's concessions in censorship, it is significant to consider that most mainland Chinese Internet users will not know to search on the English query 'Dalai Lama', nor will they be able to read the English Web site. More importantly, the Office of Tibet's Web site is excluded from google.cn searches. // |
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