CAHS2000: The Great Firewall of China

In January 2010, Google Inc. decided it would not continue to censor its users searches in mainland China. Google had previously agreed to the censorship in order to comply with Chinas strict communist government. The censorship blocked users in China from accessing sites containing information on free speech, the Tiananman Square protests, and democracy. Even news sties such as BBC News, and social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are blocked.
It was an incident in early 2010 that finally convinced Google to stop complying with Chinas censorship laws. The company discovered that the Gmail accounts of Chinese users were being hacked into, and that the Chinese government was most likely behind it. Google responded to the infiltration on March 22, 2010 by redirecting Chinese users who accessed the censored Chinese search engine (www.google.cn) to the uncensored Hong Kong search engine (www.google.hk), where users could have access to any site.
Google and China are now in a legal battle. Chinese officials claim that the company must comply with its nations laws, while Google continues to make a stance for free speech. This controversy shows an interesting prospective of international politics. This is not a typical dispute between one nation and another; it is a dispute between one nation and a company. We have reached a point in the age of globalization, where a companys influence can be so great, that its actions have repercussions on a global scale. What will result from the battle between China and Google is unknown, but we can be certain that whatever happens will surely affect us all.

Category:

Education