Two days ago, Internet search engine giant Google announced that it has pulled its search engine operations out of China and now redirects all Chinese users to its Hong Kong site. The move is a risky one for Google and an embarrassment to the Chinese government. China’s failure to find an accommodation with Google is also part of an overall pattern of worsening trade relations between the U.S. and China.

In January, Google announced that its computers, along with the computers of over 20 American companies, had been aggressively compromised and sensitive information was stolen by hackers who were traced back to two Chinese universities. The hackers were almost certainly working for the Chinese government since American businesses–and even U.S. government agencies that work with China–have seen a consistent pattern of such hacking. At the time Google said it was evaluating whether it wanted to keep its search engine operations going in China, which has demanded that Google censor its search results for sensitive topics such as protests by Tibetans or Uighurs and the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989. Read more…

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