In Foreign Policy, journalist Jordan Calinoff asks, "Is web censorship just an excuse to drive out foreign competition and give a boost to Chinese brands?" He then writes:
... Google, like Yahoo before it, has been systematically forced out of the market by a Chinese government determined to purge all foreign competition from its Internet industry, which is expected to bring in $8 billion in advertising revenue in the next three years, according to Internet research firm eMarketer.com. ...
...
Although this week's news has been perhaps the most visible and largest example of China's "firewall protectionism," Google's exit is just the latest in a long line of foreign Internet firms forced to leave the country on the shaky rationale of national security and censorship.
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In the face of an obvious and systematic form of protectionism in perhaps the most important industry for the future, the cheering from many leading American figures for Google's "brave" decision seems strange. If China were attempting to block the import of American tires, instead of American Internet media, would Americans applaud Goodyear and Congress for not putting up a fight against blatant WTO violations?
Firewall protectionism is part of a greater and dangerous trend. China has recently shown that it is willing to protect its own industries at any cost, even to the point of all-out trade war. ...
So when media reports that Google's decision is a reaction against China's desperate need to censor the Internet and spy on activists, and not about protectionism, it rings false. In a country where dissidents are routinely jailed for years without fair trials under the dubious charge of "inciting subversion of state power," and poor petitioners from the countryside are routinely thrown into Beijing's horrendous black jails for simply airing grievances, it seems strange that China truly needed to hack into human rights activists' email accounts. A more likely explanation is that it was simply trying to find a way to block the world's biggest Internet giant out of the Chinese market and was searching for the right button to push. As for Google's "threat" to pull out of the country, China will certainly not be begging them to stay.
I still need more facts before I express any views on this one. It's not very clear to me what specific actions the Chinese government has taken in this area.
