Google to self-censor Chinese service
China’s Communist Party publicity department ordered Freezing Point, the weekly supplement of the China Youth Daily, to stop publication, its founding editor Li Datong confirmed yesterday.
Mr Li’s blog has also been shut after he publicised the decision to close the weekly, founded in 1995 with a circulation of 300,000.
The Communist Party has tightened its hold over the media, the Internet, non-governmental organisations, lawyers, academics and dissidents to prevent popular revolutions.
A China Youth Daily editor who requested anonymity said the supplement was shut for publishing an essay which criticised Chinese school textbooks for portraying the xenophobic Boxer Rebellion as a patriotic movement.
Li Datong’s run-in with the China Youth Daily’s editor-in-chief last year was another factor, the editor added.
Mr Li attacked Li Erliang in an internal memo for introducing an appraisal system in which bonuses were linked to praise or criticism by leaders. The memo was leaked and published on the Internet. The two Lis are not related.
Meanwhile, Google said www.google.cn will offer a self-censored version of its popular search system that restricts access to thousands of terms, websites and services to which users contribute e-mail, chat rooms and blogs.
The company said: “Other products such as Gmail and Blogger will be introduced only when we are comfortable that we can do so in a way that strikes a proper balance among our commitments to satisfy users’ interests, expand access to information, and respond to local conditions.”
Hot topics might include independence for self-ruled democratic Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own, the Himalayan region of Tibet and the Falun Gong spiritual group, banned by Beijing as a cult in 1999.
In seeking to compete in the world’s second biggest internet market, Google is facing the toughest challenge yet to its corporate mantra of “don’t do evil”.
Google is the latest international concern to bow to Chinese censors. Microsoft’s MSN Spaces has censored phrases like “human rights” and “Taiwan independence” from subject lines of its free online journals.
Yahoo was accused of supplying data to China that was used as evidence to jail a journalist for 10 years. Yahoo defended itself saying it has to abide by local laws.
