China warns Google it must 'respect' country's laws
China warns search engine Google that it must 'respect' Chinese law, as US firm look to pull out of country
Tuesday, 16, Mar 2010 12:34
By inthenews.co.uk staff.
China has warned Google is must continue to filter web results on its search engine in the country and should "respect" Chinese law.
Google is officially insisting nothing has changed on its google.cn site, although normally-censored images from the Chinese language website, such as the iconic tank man image from the Tiananmen Square massacre, are now appearing in organic searches.
Yesterday the Chinese commerce ministry spokesman, Yao Jian, was reported as saying: "We have all along maintained a policy of opening-up and welcome foreign investments in China.
"But the prerequisite is they should respect and abide by Chinese laws.
"We hope Google will abide by the law, no matter whether it continues to do business in China or makes other choices."
Google could pull out of China, which would potentially jeopardise technological advancement in the country. The US search engine provider has been in a dispute with the communist country over hacking claims and concerns about censorship.
At the beginning of the year Google announced that it no longer wanted to obey Chinese law which places restrictions on the site.
Chinese internet already blocks users from seeing Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and major blog-hosting services abroad.