Sinocircle

Google.com has stated that it may choose to end all contact with the CCP in China.  The faceoff now between google.com and the Chinese government is in opposition to the developed nation policy of “engagement”, “containment”, and something like turning the other cheek.  Thus it is not unexpected that there has been no ready response from the CCP who is ambivalent about google.com being in China, and indeed may see this as a test case for whether China really needs any foreign web contact.

1 trillion customers.

Many Chinese policymakers believe that China will cut itself off from

the World Wide Web, using an intra-net, and to this group google.com is

either playing into their hands or else saving face by quitting before

it is kicked out.  Aside from censorship issues, there are economic

reasons to keep Chinese customers and the internet revenues they create

inside China.  Indeed, this would be inline with the depressed currency

and other mercantilist strategies used by China.  Such may be behind

facebook.com being blocked, an expressly non-political social board, so

as to force Chinese onto locally created websites such as kaixin.com.  But

what could Chinese consumers do if they no longer had access to foreign

websites?  Would nationalist rhetoric simply cow out discontent?

How many Chinese access foreign websites now?  Today’s well-circulated

photos of young and old laying flowers at google.com headquarters in

Beijing may belie the effectiveness of the government response.  CCP

diplomacy has the reputation of a 5-year-old child throwing tantrums

when it cannot get what it wants.  But it is a really big 5-year-old.  And with now over 100,000 CCP internet workers who spend their days posting pro-government lines, a powerful argument could well turn google.com

into  something no one ever really needed.  This current faceoff may

reveal that most Chinese internet users do not care if google.com and

all google’s other services are removed from China, and if it becomes

clear that Chinese can forgo google.com, the biggest foreign website,

then why not forgo them all?

brain drain.

Lacking google.com would not help China’s efforts to repatriate scientists

and top academics.  Already Chinese professors have complained that

google.com is not accessible to them at their universities, and that this

is a powerful research tool.  Were google.com’s academic services also

removed, this would be powerful propaganda suggesting there could

not be a proper academia in China.

nationalism.

But with over one trillion people to draw on does the CCP in fact want

brains or does it want those willing to engineer CCP success  in return

for money and power?  Few can overestimate the current nationalistic

ego, due to the cultural black-hole that dispatched most thinkers not

fifty years ago, but also the campaigns in place explicitly equating love

of country with love of government.  The recent online developments

all show China closing down access to information in China, but the

danger of google.com turning outside opinion against China is also real,

as already China’s trade policies in this period of economic malaise

have many countries loosing jobs.  The banner of human rights could

be used to obscure the protectionist measures many so-called

democratic countries would like to introduce against China.  So the

CCP is well advised to proceed carefully…