Words totally fail me. And I won’t say another word. Just go and see for yourself.

Am I really reading this?

Absolutely not. James Fallows, in another splendid update on the Google drama, notes the various reports coming out that it’s business as usual at Google’s Haidian headquarters – which in no way contradicts anything Google has said about the situation.

{The latest reports] indicate that Google has not pulled up stakes from China and is still operating as if it might have a future there. Is that hypocritical? I don’t think so: I think it’s in keeping with the initial announced intention to reconsider all options. As I mentioned the first time around, I think this situation is likely to turn out either lose-lose-lose — for Google (outside the Chinese market), for the Chinese government (publicly embarrassed, which will bring out worse rather than better tendencies), and for the Chinese public (symbolically cut off that much more from the mainstream of modern development, and with an internet ecology worse than it could be, with the absence of a major innovative competitor) — or win-win-win for the same parties, if the government can address Google’s complaints in a way that allows the company to remain. I assume that off-stage action toward that end is underway now.

My trolls have already started blasting Google as if it suddenly realized it made an awful mistake and is changing its mind. Not true. That may happen; I don’t know. But Google never said they were leaving China.

Fallows also posts a moving letter he was sent from a non-Chinese reader living in China. I just want to paste the powerful closing lines.

I recently showed a friend what it was like to surf the internet on the other side of the chinese firewall (thank you for your long ago recommendation of witopia). After showing sites with pictures and info regarding topics such as Tiananmen Square, the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, etc my friend was in tears. She had been very aware that China was censoring information and putting its own spin on events, but she never grasped its extent. The next day she said to me “I hate what my country has done and feel very sad. But I also still have a love for China. I don’t know what it is I really feel.” I told her that in this case I might be able to appreciate exactly what she was feeling and welcomed her to the world of far from perfect countries.

I remember at my office in Beijing when I showed my Chinese colleagues photos of Tank Man, a photo that practically none had ever seen. They told me the only photos they’d seen of June 4 were of Chinese soldiers murdered and burned by angry workers. They were amazed when I told them about Tank Man and why he captured the imagination of the world outside of China. And I remember one of them arguing with me that he should have conformed and not meddled in affairs that weren’t his business. But hey, at least we were having a dialogue about it.

This all brings back to mind a conversation I had with one of the very first friends I had in China back in 2002. I asked about how she felt about her country, and she said how much she loved China. “I love my country,” she said, “but my country doesn’t love me.” (I think she told me that was a popular saying, but honestly I don’t remember so well.) Very powerful words. The girl referenced in the letter above who suddenly realizes all that her government is hiding from her, she is actually saying the same thing. She loves her country, but her country doesn’t love her. They don’t trust her enough to know and learn and think for herself.

“I love my country, but my country doesn’t love me.”

Google’s jaw-dropping announcement is not about finding an excuse to leave China because it’s failing there. That and other rather ridiculous myths are exploded over here. I’ll just quote what the article say about that myth; read the whole thing for all he other myths. A fine piece.

Google’s China operations contribute a small fraction of the company’s overall revenue – the company doesn’t disclose the amount, but analysts estimate it was a few percent of its total $21.8 billion in 2008 revenue, or several hundred million dollars. But Google has made significant progress in China in recent years, raising its share of the Internet search market to roughly 36% in the fourth quarter of 2009 from 13% when it started its Chinese-language google.cn site in early 2006, according to data from research firm Analysys International.

Many other foreign companies doing business in China would gladly forgo big profits in the short term for comparable market-share growth in China—especially in an industry where China has more users than any other country (384 million according to the latest statistics). Google has also been particularly popular among the highly sought-after demographic of young, educated, white-collar urban professionals. The company’s powerful brand of business and ethics (“don’t be evil) has also earned it a fair amount of good will among Chinese Internet users, many of whom are now mourning its (still uncertain) fate. While rival Baidu still has a much larger 58% share of the search market, its brand has suffered as a result of scandals involving paid results and allegations of censorship of sensitive news stories.

Google doesn’t say if it’s profitable in China, but there’s certainly no reason to assume it’s not. Baidu, its chief rival, reported net profit of about $153 million on revenue of $468 million for 2008, when it said it had 6,387 employees. Google’s revenue would have perhaps half or two thirds that amount, but it likely has a much lower cost base in China than Baidu, since Google is believed to employ well under 1,000 employees in the country, and can use technology developed by its U.S. headquarters.

To make this kind of decision because business is poor at the moment makes no sense (though I am not convinced of the 36 percent market share figure, which seems awfully steep). Google knew this would be a long-term commitment with a lot of risk. They knew it might take many years, and it maintaining its operation in China meant very little skin off Google’s back.

James Fallows, as usual, is offering the sanest, most clear-headed and balanced opinions on the subject. Sample:

Two of the developments to date should not be surprising: the silence of the Chinese government, which is at its weakest in decision-making under time pressure; and the jubilation among some in the West, which I think reveals a pent-up reaction to endless stories about China’s rise and perhaps to recent Chinese government overreach. To me the more surprising — and significant — reaction is the clearly divided reactions within China, with some people reacting with nationalistic anger at Google’s insult but others taking the daring step of bringing flowers to the Google office etc.

Go to his blog and keep scrolling. Balanced, clear-headed and free from neurosis. How refreshing.

This is a contributed article from my friend in Taiwan Bill Stimson. It does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Peking Duck.

China Can Outgoogle Google

by William R. Stimson

What if they gave a dictatorship and nobody came? This is what we’re seeing happen in Iran now, and with Google it’s apparently also beginning in China.

The Chinese authorities dangle profit in front of the greedy eyes of Western firms but then as those firms rush in and struggle to establish themselves in the very different (so-called) “business” climate of China, these same authorities keep changing the rules, demanding a little bit more every few years, altering the structure of the business environment and changing the rules some more, until they themselves are firmly in control of the firms and own the technologies. To China’s leaders it must seem like such a winning game that already they can’t help strutting and posturing about their own superiority as a race, a nation, and a system of “government” that, unlike the liberal democracies of the West, works against the recession.

Only, like the populace of Iran, Google looked the big boys in the face, decided it wasn’t worth playing their cheating game, turned around, and walked out on their party. This is the opposite of the Americans going into Iraq for its oil. This is America coming of age. The greatness of America, whatever superiority it may have, as it turns out, isn’t what so many in the West, or even in China, might suspect. Rather it’s the simple freedom to innovate and to try to be real – it’s the “tangle and bother” freedom that the Chinese leaders now deride for its slow and stumbling economic recovery.

America has what China can’t steal. It can finally produce a company that is true, that places human values above dollars – a company that can win our hearts and so, of course, earn our dollars in a big way.

Google does right to step out of China because by doing so it is preserving its one priceless asset. This is not the secret computer codes the Chinese want to steal. It’s something the Chinese cannot steal from Google or any other company. Legitimate authenticity, genuineness, call it what you will – this is the commodity that will be selling in the marketplace of the future, and that not just America but Taiwan and so many free countries around the world are now perfecting. This is the commodity that will end the destruction of ecosystems, the exploitation of labor forces, the extinction of species, the stealing from future generations, and, yes, that will end poverty too; and overpopulation. A genuine company is one that gives away for free far more than it ever even attempts to sell, it is a company that spins a fortune out of thin air, and it is a company that the China we know today will never understand because it is a company that “does no evil.”

China can have all Google’s secrets, yes. But to get them it’ll have to set free its captive 1.3 billion, let them read and think and write what they want – and let them self-organize as they wish. Only then will the greatness of the Chinese culture and the superiority of its many peoples and inner nations rise up and show the world what can outgoogle Google.

This is certainly outspoken, not to mention cynical.

Here is my very crude and cynical (Eastern European) reading of the situation: Google was in need of some positive PR to correct its worsening image (especially in Europe, where concerns about privacy are mounting on a daily basis). Google.cn is the goat that would be sacrificed, for it will generate most positive headlines and may not result in devastating losses to Google’s business (Google.cn holds roughly 30 percent of the Chinese market).

All the talk about cybersecurity breaches seems epiphenomenal to this plan; it may simply be the easiest way to frame Google’s decision without triggering too many “why, oh why?” questions. Besides, there is no better candy for U.S. media and politicians than the threat of an all-out cyber-Armageddon initiated by Chinese hackers. I can assure everyone that at least a half of all discussions that Google’s move would spur would be about the need to make America more secure from cyberattacks. No better timing to throw more terrorism-related meat to the U.S. public (“what if they read Obama’s email?”).

Now, if you believe that Google was wrong to censor the Web in China in the first place, I doubt you’ll suddenly become a fan of their work — they still don’t seem to recognize that censoring the Web in China may have been wrong for ethical reasons and frame it simply as a business decision (based on new security threats). You’ll probably think that they are now doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.

If, on the other hand, you believe that they did the right thing in China by offering their limited service (rather than no service at all), I don’t see how this move could make you feel good either: all it took to get Google to shut down their “public service” was to launch a bunch of cyberattacks (so, should we expect that, instead of direct censorship, authoritarian governments would now simply launch cyberattacks on their targets and force them to leave under psychological pressure?). Thus, you’ll probably think that they are now doing the wrong thing for the wrong reasons.

Could Google be this cynical, in direct definace of their Don’t Be Evil mantra? If so, if this guy is right, it just may be working. After all, the Web was saturated today with columns and posts congratulating Google for its moral fortitude and asking, “What took them so long to do the right thing?”

But I remain cautiously skeptical. They weren’t “winning” in China but they still had more than 20 percent market share; most US companies would be thrilled if they could fail that miserably in China. I can easily imagine that they had a big blow-up with the government and found they had irreconcilable differences, and the cyber-attacks were the last straw. I actually find that more than believable. I don’t believe they’d just pick up and leave China because Baidu was ahead and leaving makes them look good in Europe. I guess the truth will come out at some point. It usually does.

If this is accurate, it is quite a story. A sophisticated, large-scale cyber-attack from within China is causing Google to overhaul its Chinese operations and possibly stop censoring the search results on google.cn. The story has everything – human rights, censorship, America’s leading brand, cybercrime, intrigue and an unprecedentedly open statement from Google.

You can read a good summary of the breaking story over here.

Google is releasing information about a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” on their corporate infrastructure that occurred last month. The attack originated in China and resulted in the “theft of intellectual property from Google.” In light of the attack Google is making sweeping changes to its Chinese operations.

Google is releasing some information about these attacks to the public. The company says that a minimal amount of user information was compromised, but has come to the alarming conclusion that the attacks were targeting the information of Chinese human rights activists. Google found that these attacks were not just going after Google’s data, but were also targeting at least twenty other major companies spanning sectors including Internet, finance, chemicals, and more. Google has also discovered that phishing attacks have been used to compromise the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists around the world.

In light of the attacks, and after attempts by the Chinese government to further restrict free speech on the web, Google has decided it will deploy a fully uncensored version of its search engine in China.

At first I didn’t believe it. Then I saw it from the horse’s mouth, Google’s own blog:

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

This is kind of slapdash; I wasn’t supposed to be blogging today as I’m on deadline. But this story is totally unbelievable, off the charts.

Thanks to the reader who alerted me to this.

Update – From the NYT

Google threatened late Tuesday to pull out of its operations in China after it said it had uncovered a massive cyber attack on its computers that originated there….

Google said that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human right activists, but that the attack also targeted 20 other large companies in the finance, technology, media and chemical sectors.

In a blog posting by David Drummond, the corporate development and chief legal officer, Google said that it had found a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China.”

“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered — combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web — have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China,” Mr. Drummond wrote in a blog post.

He wrote that Google was no longer willing to censor results on its Chinese-language search engine and would discuss with Chinese authorities whether it could operate an uncensored search engine in that country.

“We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China,” Mr. Drummond wrote, adding that the decision was being driven by executives in the United States, “without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China.”

Yeah, a very big story. I’m waiting for the conspiracy theorists who claim this is google’s creative strategy for exiting China, where things never went quite the way they expected, while making them look like the victim instead of the loser. (And no, I don’t necessarily believe that. I just know how the minds of some of my more strident commenters work. Being a PR guy, it was the first thing that crossed my mind when I heard the story – I couldn’t help it.)

Update 2: The Wall Street Journal is featuring this as their top story today, and they state:

Much of the data stolen from Google was its “core source code,” Mr. Mulvenon [director of a national security firm] said. “If you have the source code, you can potentially figure out how to do Google hacks that get all kinds of interesting data.” Among the data, would be the information needed to identify security flaws in Google’s systems, he said.

The attackers used at least seven different types of attack code to identify and steal data from Google, said Rafal Rohozinski, a principal at the SecDev Group, a Canadian security consulting firm that discovered a major Chinese spying operation on the Dalai Lama last year.

I bring this up because it calls to mind a comment I left in the earlier thread:

[D]on’t fool yourself about google. They may let you download a song for free. Would they hand you the source code for their search algorithm? No, because then they wouldn’t be Google anymore. They’d just be one of a trillions of other companies offering the same thing.

This was in response to a commenter praising Google for not caring about intellectual property and being a proponent of open-source technology (you can actually do both – be a proponent of open source and value IP). Obviously Google does care about IP, a lot – as it must. Its core source code is its bread and butter.

Post updated at 8:24pm Arizona time. Is it all a PR stunt?

This is good to know!

“Our country’s Internet situation is unique. Compared to all kinds of restrictions in foreign countries, China has the most open Internet in the world.”

«我国互联网形态有特殊性。相对于国外的各种限制，中国的互联网是全世界最开放的。»
– Zhou Xisheng (周锡生) Deputy Chief of Xinhua News Agency, Director-General of Xinhua News Net.

From notes taken at the ninth session of the 2009 SCIO Internet News Work Training Session.

Now that that’s settled, please use this as an open thread. That includes those of you who need a proxy to access this site over in the world’s most open Internet.

A week ago the Shanghaiist asked me if I’d prepare an end-of-year or end-of-decade list of what were for me the top 5 China-related event.

Now that the post has been up on their site a few days, I’m reprinting it here for posterity. These are not necessarily the most important things that happened. The Sichuan earthquake, for example, is more important than some of my other choices. There were too many to choose from, like Sun Zhigang, the tainted milk scandal and Hu’s tremendously important strides in bringing Africa closer to China. Instead, these are the items that touched me on a very personal level, inspiring me to feel joy or outrage, hope or gloom.

From Shanghaiist:

Richard Burger worked in Greater China (mostly the PRC) as a PR executive for more than six years, the last few months of which he spent as editor and columnist for the English-language Chinese daily newspaper The Global Times. He is also the author of one of the oldest and most respected China blogs, The Peking Duck

What a difference ten years has made for China, from the new kid on the block to one of the world’s most influential movers and shakers. Since 2000, China has turned the notion of “New World Order” on its head.

During those 10 years we’ve watched China experience some breathtaking highs and painful lows. I first started watching China early in 2001, when I moved from the US to Hong Kong, and still remember exactly where I was and how I felt when I heard the big news that made it to No.1 on my Personal Five Most Significant China Stories of the decade.

1. July 13, 2001: Beijing is named host city for 2008 Olympic Games

This announcement created a wave of euphoria that only intensified as the Opening Ceremony approached. From the moment it was reported until the Olympic Green was locked down at the end of August 2008 we’ve never seen so many people so motivated for so many years over a sports competition. Nothing since has ever topped this one.

2. April 20, 2003: Chinese government holds live on-air SARS press conference

I know, that sounds kind of dry. But if you were there watching it live you’ll know just how jaw-dropping it was. Some of the world’s most tight-lipped, rarely seen leaders took live questions from the international media pool in Beijing and revealed there were hundreds more known cases of SARS in Beijing than they’d admitted earlier. Afterwards, the minister of health and the mayor of Beijing were fired for negligence of duty and the May holiday was canceled to keep people from traveling. Live and in person, we watched China’s government realize that being a global power demands accountability.

3. April 7, 2008: A Chinese hero is born

It couldn’t have been better scripted by the propaganda department: A graceful young woman, an Olympic torchbearer confined to a wheelchair, is attacked in full public view in Paris by a pro-Tibet activist determined to grab the Olympic torch from her hands. She refuses to yield, using her body to protect the torch as if it were a child. The timing was incredible: China was reeling from criticism of its handling of ethnic tension in Tibet, and photos of the emotionally charged scene galvanized the global Chinese community and created a groundswell of national pride just when China needed it. This sense of commonality and closing rank was to be matched only by the volunteerism generated by the Sichuan earthquake the next month – a close runner-up for this list.

4. June 16, 2009: Chinese court frees Deng Yujiao

The release of Deng Yujiao, the 21-year-old Chinese karaoke waitress turned folk hero who stabbed to death a drunken party official who tried to force her to have sex, resonated with everyone in China. Originally found guilty of murder, her plight captured the imagination of Chinese activists and netizens and her release was historic, proving that with enough pressure from an energized and outraged public the Chinese government will respond to injustices that in the past were swept under the carpet. We’ll know in the year ahead if it truly marked a turning point.

5. June 2009 – present: Post-Olympic communication crackdown

After opening its Internet more than ever before for the 2008 Olympic Games, China took a sharp swerve in the opposite direction the next year. The ominous clouds of heightened censorship moved in prior to the 20th anniversary of the “Tiananamen Square Incident” with the banning of Chinese and English-language social media sites and it kept getting worse right through the October 1 festivities, with no end in sight to this day. Many had misread the April 20, 2003 press conference as a sign China was ready to open up. In some ways it has, but the Internet remains more censored than ever.

###

I know we all have our different picks for a list like this. So feel free to suggest your own.

Don’t miss the very interesting follow up post to the story I linked to directly below. Seems the Party was just one step behind the Far West blogger, ready to plug any annoying leaks.

I had it coming, I guess. Less than 48 hours after I published an article about the internet situation in Xinjiang (including a short sentence about the ability to circumvent the block), every single internet and phone loophole across the province suddenly stopped working. Obviously it is most likely a coincidence, but I’m beginning to feel guilty when I get concerned calls from other foreigners asking me if my ability to access the internet has been disabled as well.

As I sit here in a hotel room in Shanghai, soaking up what may be the last ounce of internet I see until February, I find myself struggling with what is happening back in Xinjiang. A lively discussion on the ethics of this internet block took place over at the Peking Duck and although I find it interesting I’m glad I didn’t get the chance to enter the debate. [From Richard: I’m glad as well, for your sake. Life’s too short.]

The fact is that I moved to Xinjiang knowing full-well that I was subjugating myself to China’s laws and leadership. I don’t feel that I have the right to complain (although I do reserve the right to remain frustrated!) and I definitely don’t feel like packing up and calling it quits. I refuse to let the internet dictate my life no matter how important

Best of all is the quote he includes at the very end. This wall is about as effective at “protecting” the Chinese people as that other, more famous wall. Great post, once again.

Any commenter who comes on here and argues the GFW is proof of the CCP’s genious because they’re just using it, successfully, to protect China’s citizens from computer viruses and malware does so at their own risk. Please, can’t you come up with something better than that?

Please go read this fascinating post about the government’s digital sequestration of Xinjiang, a phenomenon that stands as a kind of case study of just how deeply the weak-kneed CCP fears any spark that might ignite the tinderbox of public opinion.

One snip about when it might end:

Here is the million-dollar question. If you ask 10 different people in Urumqi when the internet should turn back on you’re likely to get 10 different answers. The list ranges from the 1st of the year to somewhere in the middle of next year but everybody readily admits they’re not for sure.

Until a couple of weeks ago I would have been hesitant to answer this question, but a friend I trust passed along some interesting information that has given me the boldness to make my own predictions. According to some memos sent between the capital and the head office of our city’s main telecom provider, service is expected to open up during the May holiday of 2010.

There you have it. I’ve bet my money and made my prediction. This is just the halfway point…we have another 5 months to go. Of course, being wrong won’t make me sad if it’s sooner rather than later.

A sad situation, and a vivid reminder of how some things haven’t changed all that much. For all its enlightenment and reform, the party remains prickly and paranoid. Imagine any other great power blocking out the Internet in areas where there is turmoil….

And yes, I know, America has done bad things, too, and killed Indians. But I’m talking now about China. And for China, this is a sad episode, a sign of an inherent weakness and lack of confidence, despite the party’s strength and staying power, which I’ve also written about at length recently.

Update: Looking at this a day later, I think this was a pretty mediocre post. Apologies. I don’t mean to beat a dead horse about the CCP’s prickliness, and I’ve tried to make amply clear that that’s not all the party is about. But this episode just bugged me and raised all sorts of memories of bad experiences I had with censorship in China back in 2003.