BEIJING — The Chinese government is taking a cautious approach to the dispute with Google, treating the conflict as a business dispute that requires commercial negotiations and not a political matter that could affect relations with the United States.
Officials were caught off guard by Google’s move, and they want to avoid the issue’s becoming a referendum among Chinese liberals and foreign companies on the Chinese government’s Internet censorship policies, say people who have spoken to officials here. There have been no public attacks on Google from senior officials or formal editorials in the newspaper People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece.
Instead, most official statements and state media reports on Google’s surprise announcement that it intends to stop complying with Chinese censorship rules and might shut down its China operations criticized Google as trying to play politics and suggested that its business troubles in China were the real reason for the dispute.
“The Chinese government wants to handle the issue on a commercial level,” said Su Hao, a professor of Asia-Pacific studies at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing.
The most direct official statement came on Tuesday, when Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a news conference that Google was not exempt from Chinese law, implying that the company would have to continue self-censoring its Chinese-language search engine, Google.cn, if it wanted to keep doing business in China.
“Foreign enterprises in China need to adhere to China’s laws and regulations, respect the interests of the general public and cultural traditions, and shoulder corresponding responsibilities,” Mr. Ma said.
Some Chinese say the government is unlikely to escalate the dispute with Google unless the United States does. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is to deliver a speech in Washington on Internet freedom on Thursday that will be closely watched in China. Some Chinese experts say the tone of her comments could propel the Google dispute in a more ideological direction, spurring incendiary speech on one side about the quashing of media freedoms and on the other about Western neo-imperialism.
“If it were a simple matter of Google and China, obviously Google wouldn’t be conferring with the U.S. State Department,” said an editor for a Communist Party newspaper. “So the Chinese government is still waiting for Hillary to speak and for Google to make its final decision and so forth.”
The conflict exploded last week when executives at Google said it and more than 30 other American companies had come under sophisticated attacks from hackers. Those attacks were traced to mainland China, executives said. Google had also been monitoring a separate series of attacks against the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights advocates doing work on China.
In response, Google said it would negotiate with the Chinese government to put an end to an unwelcome requirement that it self-censor Google.cn. Google is prepared to shut down Google.cn, but reportedly wants to keep much of its local business and engineering operations.
Two Western officials in Beijing said there was no unity yet among Chinese officials on how to handle the matter. That indecision is fueled by the fact that Google has yet to change its operations — it still self-censors searches on Google.cn — or enter into serious discussions with Chinese officials.
Some Chinese officials seem to be aware that pushing back against Google too hard and too fast — like blocking Google.com or cutting off Gmail — could raise the ire of ordinary Chinese, especially liberals here who already bristle at censorship.
“The government was taken off guard and is still nervous,” said a well-connected Chinese media investor, “because all the international media are standing with Google, and even in China a lot of media people feel what they are doing is right.” But all officials can do, he said, “is try to make the problem pass as quietly as possible.”
The investor said other big Internet companies with foreign investment had tried to approach the State Council Information Office, the lead government agency in charge of executing China’s media and Internet policies, to discuss the Google matter and its larger implications. But they were rebuffed, he said.
One liberal Chinese blogger said he got a call last Sunday from a low-level Chinese official who had been ordered by senior officials to collect suggestions on how to treat the matter. “It proves they’re still collecting advice because this is a confusing thing,” the blogger said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his relationship with the official.
Patriotic Chinese writers and newspapers have called for China to stand up to Google, but the only real official editorial was a mild one on Monday in China Daily, an official English-language newspaper. Titled “A Matter of Business,” it emphasized the government line that the dispute was all about commerce.
“Whatever the real cause for Google’s possible move, this case is purely business in nature and it should have nothing to do with political ideology,” it said. “If this Internet giant has political values, it should never have been involved in such a business.”
Part of the government’s strategy to deflect Google’s accusations appears to be to present cyberattacks as common and the Chinese government as a victim, just like Google. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that in the week ending Jan. 10, 178 government Web sites were maliciously attacked, a fourfold increase from the previous week. The ministry described the state of Internet security that week as “generally poor,” according to Beijing News, a daily newspaper.
One Internet security analyst said China’s approach might work to its advantage. “Let Google do the escalating,” he said, “and put the blame on Google.”
Dan Brody, a former executive at Google China, said that if Google refused to continue self-censorship, “it’s going to be up to the Chinese government to decide, ‘Are you going to block Google.cn and receive the international opprobrium?’ And the Chinese government doesn’t have a track record of bending to the will of international public opinion.”