Google Threatens to Quit China Due to Ulterior Motives

When I read Google’s statement that it would quit China, I had a feeling that it had ulterior motives.

The first paragraph alludes to the idea that the cyber attacks Google faced were highly sophisticated and designed by the Chinese authorities; the second paragraph pulls in a lot of companies to cheer for it; the third and fourth paragraphs picture the victims as Chinese human rights activists; the fourth paragraph also says that the target of the attacks was not the server, but the users; the sixth paragraph describes the attacks Google faced as an attack on free speech; and the seventh and eighth paragraphs say that Google’s principle is to advocate free speech and that they will quit China if this principle fails.

All in all, Google threatens to quit China because China infringes on its principle of human rights and free speech.

It’s not new for the West to accuse China of human rights abuses, but this trick doesn’t seem to work because the West is not a perfect role model in this regard either. Google uses this banal trick because its master, America, is already at the end of its tether trying to mess up China, but Google’s trick was indeed so poor that it disgusts everyone.

A cyber attack happens every minute as a by-product of the cyber age. [An attack] can be sent out by any computer from any country or area. This does not mean the government or an individual of that country or area initiates the attack —a cyber attack can be initiated through a hacked computer in one country with the real attacker hiding in another. Besides, a hacked computer that sends out an attack may be one of the victims as well. Google definitely knows about this, but it wouldn’t serve its purposes to make this clear. Therefore, I speculate that the so-called internet attack on Google was, in essence, a falsehood fabricated by Google itself.

Google claims that at least 20 companies have faced similar attacks. Is Google the international cyber security administration? Do all companies have to report the cyber attacks they’ve faced and the types of the attacks to Google? Otherwise, how could they know at least 20 companies were under attack? Maybe the American government told them so, or maybe they just made it up themselves.

Google says the hacked Gmail accounts belonged to Chinese human rights activists. How on earth does Google know if its e-mail user is a Chinese human rights activist? Does that person have to make some kind of announcement when he registers, or does Google make the conclusion itself by illegally viewing and analyzing that user’s e-mail content? I’ve been using Gmail for 6 years and I wonder which group of people Google puts me in. I shudder to think that Google takes to viewing my emails as a hobby, yet, I send my personal information, business secrets and banking information through Gmail. But I’m sure the attacker was just looking for fun; otherwise, why weren’t they interested in the content of the hacked e-mail? And, by the way, if I don’t report to Google that my account has been hacked, Google will not know about it. Further, I will not notice that my e-mail account has been hacked if the e-mails are not read by someone else.

The whole situation is clear enough by now — Google wants to use human rights as a tool to damage China, and everything else is just an excuse.

Objectively speaking, China indeed has a long way to go with regard to human rights, democracy and freedom of the press, but this cannot be an excuse for foreign governments, organizations or even little Google to interfere with China’s internal affairs.

So to speak, in a village with a poor family and a rich family, the parents from the poor family tell their children to eat less, make fewer complaints and work harder so they can become richer and not be bullied by that rich family any more. They are strict with their children and the children understand their situation. But living a comfortable life, the parents from the rich family don’t like the poor family and they worry the poor family will pay back all the bullying when they get richer and stronger, so they do all they can to pick bones with that poor family. They spoil their own children and ask the poor family to do the same — they think their philosophy of living is a universal value. The poor family weighed their options and they know they can’t afford to live life as the rich family does. So the poor family sticks to their own principle of living, no matter how hard the rich family tries to tempt them.

Failing Plan A, the rich family launches Plan B — the children of the poor families will have to be educated by the rich family. Some other families agree under pressure and the rich family tells those children that their parents treat them very badly. That the way the rich kids are treated is the right way to go. They tell them their families are not rich because their parents are of low ability, that they do not adhere to the universal value and that that their parents treat them unfairly. Harry from family A has talent but his parents don’t let him do anything, and if he was born to family B, he would be a better person and make that family rich. It doesn’t take long before the other families get into a fight with each other, and their lives get poorer and poorer.

That poor family in the village sees all this happening with a shudder. They will by no means send their children to the rich families to be educated. Therefore, they are said not to be adhering to the universal value.

The U.S. claims itself to be a beacon of democracy, but in my opinion it is the reef of democracy. Democracy is its tool to interfere with other country’s internal affairs. Which country’s color revolution has made that country stronger and more prosperous? What kind of democracy is a real democracy if it doesn’t serve the interests of the U.S. government?

Therefore, without America, we might achieve democracy as soon as we can. With America in this world, who dares to carry out American democracy without sacrificing their own national interests? If the so-called American democracy is not a reef, then what else can it be?

Press control is a national power and I support my country in enhancing this kind of power. Press freedom is relative. Every country has press control — it’s just a matter of how. The situation is just like there being a live wire in a big park — America may put up a tablet that says “high voltage,” or it may cleverly build up a glass fence around the pylon, while China sets up an ugly fence around it. The Chinese fence is too ugly and it sticks out too much, so people accuse it of taking away freedom. My question is, why do you have to go play inside that fence when there’s plenty of space left in the park? We need press freedom so it can monitor and criticize the government, which has improved, although there is still much to do, as some organizations and individuals do their best to control the news reports out of their own interests. We do not need press freedom to agitate and add to the hatred of the government; we do not need press freedom to spread obscenity and crime; and we do not allow the anti-China forces to try to take control of our press. If America insists that it has true press freedom, will they let a Chinese company buy the New York Times or CNN? If not, then stop beating the drum.

Does America really care about China’s human rights? America seems never to have any reaction to the problems of extorting confession by torture in the police station or the violent corporal punishment in prisons in China; America never speaks for the officials or common people who are threatened by the mafia; America doesn’t say anything about the commonly exiting prerogative in Chinese society, which results in unfairness and corruption; America doesn’t offer any help to poor people in China in order to improve their lives or education, either. America cares more about those human rights activists who will do harm to China, and those terrorists who can’t be controlled and won’t be punished. America tries its best to protect these kinds of forces because these are weapons to suppress China.

Chinese people need democracy, freedom and human rights. We support our government in making gradual improvements and finding suitable strategy for these matters, and we welcome good-intentioned foreign friends to put benign pressure on our government regarding China’s national interests as a whole. But for those ill-intentioned foreign forces, we’ve already seen through your tricks and we have no interest in your so-called universal value.

Farewell, Google.

*****

Following: Google’s Statement to Quit China

A New Approach to China

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident — albeit a significant one — was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation, we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses — including the internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors — have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date, we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of e-mails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

We have already used information gained from this attack to make infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google and for our users. In terms of individual users, we would advise people to deploy reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware programs on their computers, to install patches for their operating systems and to update their web browsers. Always be cautious when clicking on links appearing in instant messages and emails, or when asked to share personal information like passwords online. You can read more here about our cyber-security recommendations. People interested wanting to learn more about these kinds of attacks can read this U.S. government report (PDF), Nart Villeneuve’s blog and this presentation on the GhostNet spying incident.

We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech. In the last two decades, China’s economic reform programs and its citizens’ entrepreneurial flair have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty. Indeed, this great nation is at the heart of much economic progress and development in the world today.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered – combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web – have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.