Firing back at Google, China begins blocking HK content

As expected, China has fired back at Google in the company's attempt to redirect users from Google.cn to its uncensored Hong Kong site. Not only has the country replied with a fiery retort, it's begun blocking some access to Google.com.hk from mainland China.

China's official Xinhua News Agency quoted an unnamed official in a statement made just hours after Monday's announcement by Google.

"Google has violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks. This is totally wrong. We're uncompromisingly opposed to the politicization of commercial issues, and express our discontent and indignation to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conducts."

The New York Times reported that "Mainland Chinese users still could not see much of the unfiltered Hong Kong search results Tuesday because government firewalls either disabled searches for highly objectionable terms completely or blocked links to certain results."

Meanwhile, NBC confirmed the same, via an NBC correspondent in Beijing.

For example, searching for "Hu Jintao," the president's name, "Falun Gong," the name of a semi-religious sect frowned upon by the Chinese government, or "June 4th", the day of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in Google's Hong Kong site resulted in a message saying, "Internet Explorer can not display the Web page."

Google and the Chinese government have been jousting for months, after Google detected attempts to hack into Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights advocates, coming from China.

For those not aware, while Hong Kong is part of China, it was granted a degree of autonomy when it was returned to Chinese rule by the U.K. in 1997. In fact, its legal and political freedoms were largely preserved. That is how Google has made this "end run" around the Chinese censorship issue.

Some are concerned, however, that Google's move may place Hong Kong's leadership in an unfavorable light. Nicholas Bequelin, Human Rights Watch's senior Asia researcher said:

"China may also read this as a challenge to its sovereignty of Hong Kong. Google's move is probably going to put the heat on the Hong Kong authorities, (whose) leadership is handpicked by Beijing."

Unlike most of the rest of the world, Google doesn't have the market lead in China. The search market is largely owned by Chinese-run Baidu. However, even with a second place ranking in China, the sheer number of users in that country would obviously make its opportunities attractive to Google.