Are Google’s China users being left in the dark?
Comparing Google’s English
and Chinese language search engines highlights how far the company has gone to
win the approval of China’s authorities.
Entering sensitive terms into
the Chinese search engine throws up unusual results, with official Communist Party
viewpoints taking precedence.
Typing in the Chinese characters for Falun
Gong – the spiritual movement China brands an evil cult – brings up results like
the official Chinese media’s "Expose and Criticise Falun Gong" campaign.
Type Falun Gong into the English search engine, in contrast, and the movement’s
homepages and information centre are top of the results.
The Epoch Times,
a New York based newspaper which has strongly criticised the Communist Party,
also gets differential treatment.
Google’s English search immediately brings
up the paper’s homepage.
But typing the paper’s Chinese name into Google’s
Chinese search engine brings up Chinese government sites which criticise the paper’s
campaigns.
BBC included
Taiwan independence – another extremely
sensitive subject for Beijing’s rulers – brings up similar discrepancies.
Entering
the Chinese characters for Taiwan independence into the Chinese language site
brings results like Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing warning that China cannot
tolerate such an outcome.
The same phase entered into the English engine
brings up news reports, a Wikipedia entry and the homepage of the Taiwan Independence
Party.
The BBC is not spared. The BBC’s news website is heavily censored
inside China, and is not generally available.
Entering BBC into Google’s
Chinese search engine brings up links to politically neutral sites like the BBC’s
learning languages. But there are no links provided to the BBC’s news output.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4646360.stm
Posting
Date: 28/Jan/06
Original Article Date: 25/Jan/06
Category: Media Report
