Highlights

Google's excuse about censorship unacceptable, netizens say

(chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-03-22 17:02

Google will close its business in China next month, the China Business News reported on Friday, for its alleged reasons of China's stringent censorship and the hacking of Gmail accounts. But a majority of netizens of chinadaily.com.cn believes that Internet censorship is common practice everywhere in the world and China is no exception.

American netizen John said that even in the U.S., Google practices censorship. "In the US, Google is obeying the Patriot Act, which means that it is spying on the email of an unknown number of people without their knowledge and without a court order as I understand it. The US is proposing a disinformation campaign on websites that find fault with government policy. Government agents hiding their identity would 'correct' any opinions the government finds 'incorrect' by planting information favorable to the position of the government. Such a program has been proposed by a former Harvard Law professor, now a top aide to Obama."

HsunTze from the Malaysia deemed it important to practice Internet censorship. "As a saying goes:Prevention is better than cure. It is wise and I agree with it. If good things are digested, it is good for body and mind. But if that good thing contains traces of poison, then such traces must be eliminated prior to distribution. It is vital to check, monitor, filter and remove the harm-causing elements so that only the good part reaches the public. Who could tell when ill-intentioned foreign elements want to bring harm to a country? So censoring is not all bad. It is needed."

Another American netizen, CV, expressed his anger by saying that it is unfair for the US government to criticize China while it is censoring the Internet too. "Google wants its Chinese website to include harmful pornographic, anti-China separatists and subversive information so that these info are spread to 1.3 billion Chinese citizens, something that Chinese government intentionally and consciously wants to limit. The US government will in no way allow anti-US such as Al-Qaida and domestic and international Muslim extremist websites to be searchable by US citizens."