News flashback:

On May 17, 2010 CCTV news reported that Chinese government shuts down a famous Internet forum – “Moonlight Forum”, because this website carried sensitive military information in China such as locations of airfield, navy bases and barracks of Hong Kong PLA battalion that posed as a threat to China’s state national security.

In the news translated by ESWN:

The Moonlight Forum is a community website frequented by military aficionados.  They have sections such as "China’s nuclear test sites," "Chinese military airfields," "military camps around Beijing," "the catalog of Chinese military equipment" and so on.  Compared to other military websites, the Moonlight Forum links directly to a certain overseas geographical mapping search engine.  Thus, users can go through the client software and freely browse the high-resolution satellite photo maps all over the world.  Users can also annotate the geographical locations of various military locations on maps.

» » » » Continue reading ‘China regulates Online Map Services to address national security breach, will Google Earth comply?’

(Key: The following is submitted to me by ChinaHush reader, blogger Carlis:)

I found this piece of QQ chat log showing us how network supervision is delivered to each web portal.
(QQ, or Tencent QQ, is the most popular free instant messaging computer program in China)

» » » » Continue reading ‘A QQ chat log about supervising Google-related contents’

So it looks like Google is finally going to leave China, the date may be set to April 10. Yesterday, “First Finical Daily” had the report about the latest development on Google China. “We already got the news, saying Google will leave China on April 10, this news currently has not been confirmed by Google yet.” according to a person briefed on the matter. Google China staff members also told the newspaper reporter that the announcement could come as early as Monday March 22. This news then was reposted all over Chinese media and western media.

It will truly be a sad day for the Chinese netizens when that really happens, according to my observations most Chinese netizens wish Google can stay in China, despite the fact some of the online polls on some major Chinese sites show otherwise. Read the Chinese netizens’ open letter to Chinese Government and Google to see how they really feel about the situation.  Here is the translation of the Key parts.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Xinhua News: China Refuses “Political Google” and “Google’s Politics”’

From ifeng:

At 15:00 March 2^nd, the first press conference of the 2010 NPC & CPPCC Annual Sessions (aka. two sessions) was held on the third floor of Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The conference was opened by spokesman Zhao Qizheng, who answered a few questions from reporters and journalists. Here is an excerpt of the press conference.

NPC= National People’s Congress;

CPPCC=Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference

» » » » Continue reading ‘The horse that turns back is smart: Google’s staying in China’

A Shanzhai version of Google.com has just been created and launched in China, introducing www.goojje.com. It is not a joke, this website is to compete with the world’s number one search engine, it is also said to be a gesture to press Google to stay in China. The appearance of the website is almost identical to Google.com. “Google” is turned into Goojje, and in Chinese, 谷歌 became 谷姐. (姐:jie means “Sister” in Chinese.) The slogan under the logo reads “Brother’s stay is for sister, brother is still obsessed with sister.”

“哥的留下是为了姐，哥依然迷恋着姐”
Brother’s stay is for sister, brother is still obsessed with sister

» » » » Continue reading ‘Goojje.com, sister of Google?’

Jan, 21, 2010: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton gives a speech on Internet freedom at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

(If you cannot see YouTube videos in China, try use VPN software : Freedur,  and use coupon code CHINAHUSH to get 10% off. )

How did Chinese government respond to this speech?

From Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China:

Q: In her speech on internet freedom on January 21, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented on China’s internet policy, accusing China of restricting internet freedom. How do you comment?

» » » » Continue reading ‘A Chinese Netizen’s open letter to U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’

One Mopper posted a thread on MOP calling all netizens to say farewell to Google by posting a collection of Google doodles. He wishes everyone by posting these pictures and by leaving messages on this post to say “take care” and “safe journey” to this friend just before parting.

How appropriate to start with this doodle:
“How happy we are. To have friends come from afar!”- Confucius

» » » » Continue reading ‘Chinese netizens say goodbye to Google with Google doodles’

From Han Han’s blog

Recently I read some Shanghai related news, it is very interesting to connect them together. First, Shanghai’s concrete mixer vehicles drive the city construction in the rate of crushing one person dead each day on average. If this continues, China’s pavilions will be dyed in red with insignificant people’s blood.

Secondly, Politics and Law Committee secretary in Shanghai announced that he is determined to not allow the gangsters to be established in Shanghai. To this I feel rather at ease, because everything is so expensive in Shanghai, not that many gang leaders can afford to support any of their little brothers, Shanghai has already put an end to the creation of gangs from their roots.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Han Han: I am just exploring’

I picked these two articles because they showed two completely different views on the Google China situation in China. First one is a blog post written by KESO (洪波) a well-known IT blogger in China.  (I have translated one of is blog posts back when Kai-fu Lee resigned from Google China.) The latter one is an article from one of the Chinese media site: People’s daily, written by a netizen named Jiang Bojing (姜伯静).  Compare them for yourself…

Google to withdraw from China

By well-known IT blogger: KESO

Google officially announced that they will no longer review and censor search results on google.cn and they will have discussions with the Chinese government in the next few weeks. How can Google.cn operate legally under the premise of not providing filtered searches? If they cannot achieve these, Google will consider closing Google.cn, even all of its China offices.

To Google, this is a difficult decision. To me, this is a painful choice. Most of my life online depend on Google. I use Google to search, Gmail to send emails, Google Reader to read many of my subscribed contents, Google Docs for managing all my office documents and Picasa for processing photos and even marking their geo-locations… All of these, there is no third party application can replace Google. Not to mention that there are large numbers of Chinese enterprises, such as Alibaba, need to rely on Google’s search and advertising for their global business.

» » » » Continue reading ‘More Chinese opinions on Google leaving China (Keso vs. People’s Daily)’

Just 2 days ago CC sent me a link to a Chinese blog post about how he noticed his personal emails from Gmail account was accessed and screened by GFW. I was skeptical and thought it could just be a hoax or hype or just a theory. And today, the news broke out. Google officially announced that they will no longer provide censored searches for Google.cn because they faced cyber attacks originated from China which targeted Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists! This could mean end of the road for Google in China.

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.

My jaw dropped as I read the statement from Google. This is exactly what the blog I read 2 days ago tries to prove.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Gmail security breach, want some proof?’

On September 4^th 2009 Google China sent an internal email to all of its employees, announcing the founding president of Google China Kai-fu Lee (李开复)  has resigned. He will officially leave Google in mid-September to start his independent venture. Many Chinese writers and bloggers have responded to this news, reviewing the solid job Kaifu Lee has done with Google China in the past years and speculating the reason of Lee’s resignation. I am going to translate a blog post by the well-known IT blogger Keso on this news.

» » » » Continue reading ‘Google China Kai-fu Era’

From Financial Network, Beijing, Intern reporter: 王奇华
China internet department on June 18 announced to impose penalty to “Google China” website (google.cn) to suspend foreign internet searches, also the feature that automatically suggests different search keywords once start typing in search textbox. Google is being punished for linking to pornographic content. Chinese government ordered its rectification to immediately cleaning up pornographic and vulgar content.

» » » » Continue reading ‘China Orders Google to Suspend Foreign Internet Searches’