The horse that turns back is smart: Google’s staying in China

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

Every March, the two sessions will hold whole conference in succession. The mission of the two sessions is to collect requests and requirements from the people, and report them to the Party, whom act to improve the situation by making policy or the like.

[People’s Daily]: First I would like to ask you about your comment on the Google affair. At first, it is only a corporation’s business behavior, subsequently it was said to become a diplomatic affair, how do you think of that? Second question is about a movie from last year called The Founding of a Republic (建国大业). The movie brought to us the process in which the Party consulted with peoples from all walks to found the new country. But as we perceive, current political consultative activities present some sort of casualness that goes without restriction or limits from laws or policies. Some regional governments have countered that by listing the consultative right of decision making into government documents. And what CPPCC will do? Thank you.

[Zhao Qizheng]: Political consultation isn’t of no procedure. But our procedure must keep up with the time, and get better. Procedural experiments done by regional government will serve as reference to CPPCC.

As for Google affair, there have been mountains of report and comments form in and out of the country, which did provide some backgrounds we don’t know of at the first place, but I did know about Google’s entry into China back in 2005 when I was working for the news office of the State Council. I know exactly that, in 2005 they came to China to research on the Internet market and its environment, and they dig deep. A big foreign corporation from whichever field will dig down into the investment environment before they enter China, and Google pore over China’s legal environment sentence by sentence, word by word. Then in 2006 Google made serious promises about these legal issues as it launched official entry into China. Now they said they got hacked by Chinese hackers, and alluded to the China government, which is groundless and makes no sense, because Chinese laws prohibit any kinds of hacker attacks and enact legal penalty for them. All of us seat here today use computer everyday, I myself was hacked to black screen, lost important documents, I hate hackers from the bottom of my heart.

During my service in Shanghai, I have plenty of touches with foreign companies, from whom I learned that there was an adaptation phase for new comers. They have to learn to fit in the Chinese economic environment as well as Chinese culture, a process they have to go through. And for IT industry’s operation environment, the existence of hacker is as common as virus like H1N1 in our everyday life, you have to adapt to it. I believe protection against these viruses is not a problem for high-tech company like Google.

We learned from Darwin’s evolution theory that species must adapt to its environment before it achieves evolution, not the other way around.

Some media think that Baidu will take the country at the absent of Google. I believe Baidu may disagree with that. Wang Meng skiing on the track, if there is no rival beside her, she couldn’t have break the record so quickly. Thus a good corporation must have a good rival to drive him forward.

Google’s Cloud Computing is superb, so is Li Yanhong’s (Baidu CEO) Box Computing. I would like to see them competing, of course I haven’t ask Li Yanhong about this, may be he’ll agree too.

In China we have an old idiom, “a good horse will not turn back to eat the grass behind. There is a problem in it, why shouldn’t it turn back if there is good grass. A good horse eats good grass, so I say the horse that turn back could be a smart one. China’s Internet is open, and it will continue to create favorable investment environment for foreign business, as well as protect their legitimate benefits. China welcome business from all over the world to take a part in China, and we hope that foreign investors respect the public benefit, cultural tradition and laws of China, and take on relevant social responsibilities.

Many of the members of CPPCC can’t live without the Internet, their interests are connected to the Internet, and the above is what I conclude from chatting with them.