Google vs China: the endgame

By John Parker

Although the dispute between the Chinese government and Google continues to evolve, there were signs at the beginning of April that a ceasefire may be taking hold, one that could allow both sides to plausibly claim victory. At the end of March, Google failed to renew its Internet Content Provider (ICP) license in China; since an ICP license is required for all China-registered commercial websites, this effectively sounded the death knell for Google's simplified-Chinese search engine, google.cn.

All requests for the google.cn website are now redirected to Google's Hong Kong site, www.google.com.hk. The pullout has obviously damaged Google's business prospects in China, but it is not clear how much, since the company continues to conduct research and development work in China, as well as serving mainland Chinese customers for the company's numerous other
products, including mail, translation, online ads, and so on. At the same time, the Mountain View, California-based company could reasonably claim that it had stuck to its well-known "don't be evil" slogan: the company's leaders clearly chose principle over profit by pulling out of China, the world's fastest-growing Internet market.

As for the Chinese government, it sought to force compliance with its policy of censoring the Internet; in this it has succeeded, at least in the short term, since Google's unwillingness to cooperate with the censorship policy led to the company shutting the door, in spite of its arguably great importance to Chinese Internet users.
As of April 12, the Hong Kong site was freely available to mainland Internet users (ie, without requiring special circumvention measures such as proxy servers). The company had set up a special page (http://www.google.com/prc/report.html) to track the availability of various Google pages on the mainland. The relative stability of this table (there have been few changes the last two weeks except for a blip on March 30, the cause of which remains unclear) shows that the standoff between China and Google seems to have stabilized, at least temporarily.

Youtube sites and Blogger are completely blocked, but that is a reflection of longstanding policy - the Chinese government blocks every blog service that it knows about and can't control, and the censorship axe fell on Youtube many months ago. In some respects, the table is actually overly generous towards the Chinese firewall; for example, it reports Google Image Search as fully functional, but in reality the service has been effectively unusable in mainland China for years because images unpredictably fail to load.

Interestingly, although google.com.hk, like Google's other Hong Kong-specific websites, uses traditional Chinese characters instead of the simplified versions preferred in mainland China, the page has a set of buttons allowing users to search for results in simplified Chinese only, suggesting that Google intends to continue serving mainland search customers as well as it can.

Nonetheless, it was not clear how long Google's Hong Kong gambit would last; as Google has acknowledged from the beginning, Beijing could block access to the Hong Kong site anytime it chooses, even though Google's site redirection violates no Chinese laws. This raises two interesting questions: first, will the government block the Hong Kong site, or not? And second, if it decides not to (so far it hasn't), why not?

This writer's own view is that a block is likely eventually because the switchover to the Hong Kong page is embarrassing for the government; the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not used to hearing the word "no" from anyone, especially from foreign companies eager to do business on the mainland, and it was clearly caught flat-footed by Google's defiance. In addition, the sudden ubiquity of the Hong Kong page on mainland computer screens raises awkward questions about why, 61 years after the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and 13 years Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) after Hong Kong's return to China, there are still such drastic differences in political freedoms between the Hong Kong and mainland China.

However, one Western expert on the Chinese firewall interviewed for this article predicted that the Hong Kong page would not be interfered with. To elaborate, the main point of contention between Google and China was the state requirement for search filtering (ie, "forbidden" pages omitted from search results); Google's unwillingness to do this for google.cn led directly to the company's pullout. This expert argued that search filtering is only one aspect of the Chinese firewall and not the most important one. The government's basic goal is to prevent Chinese Internet users from encountering "forbidden" information, such as information about the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 (aka the June 4 incident). But in order to encounter such information, users must first know about it from another source, otherwise they would not know to search for it in the first place; in contemporary China, where many Chinese under 25 (perhaps most) have never even heard of the June 4 incident, this is a surprisingly effective first line of defense for the CCP.

The second line of defense is the blocking of web pages with "forbidden" content. This line arguably remains intact even if mainland users are conducting unfiltered searches because any "forbidden" page thrown up by the search engine will still be unavailable (without countermeasures). If this view is correct, the status quo may persist indefinitely, since the government may conclude that search filtering is simply not important enough to insist upon. Another argument against blocking of the Hong Kong page is political, related to the "one country, two systems" formula which governs the PRC-HKSAR relationship, and its relevance to the unresolved status of Taiwan.

If the CCP takes a hard line with Google and blocks the Hong Kong site from mainland users or even forces its shutdown in Hong Kong, then the government would become vulnerable to allegations that it had broken its promises to Hong Kong; such an outcome could be used in Taiwan by the Taiwan independence faction, which would point to the interference with Hong Kong's Internet access as an example of what would await Taiwan in the event of reunification.

Regardless of whether such arguments are actually being heard in Beijing, it is clear that the issues raised by the Google dispute are complex and involve high stakes, and that a decision on the case will necessarily involve the highest levels of the PRC government. This is almost certainly the reason why it seemed to take so long for Beijing to make a decision on the Google issue.

At almost the same time that Google began redirecting mainland search traffic to its Hong Kong site, it introduced another measure: the company began encrypting traffic to its gmail email system with the https protocol, so that gmail users in China now have an encrypted connection to the mail server by default. The same expert cited above felt that this measure is more significant, in the long run, than the Hong Kong site redirection.

Since https was intended for e-commerce and electronic banking use, the level of encryption is very high - far too high to be decrypted on the fly, and even decrypting the email messages of a single individual using https would require a major effort. Therefore, in a sense, the government's attempt to spy on gmail traffic may have backfired, since Google responded by protecting its customers' email accounts much more heavily than before. Of course, the government could counter this by blocking all https traffic, but this would be spectacularly counterproductive, since the vast majority of e-commerce sites worldwide would instantly become unusable within China.

The media and public response
Most media commentary on the case focused on the startling asymmetry of the confrontation between the Chinese government and a Western company, which superficially seemed to confirm notions of large corporations as independent political actors; it was as if Google had its own foreign policy. The idea of Google as an independent quasi-state entity was further reinforced by the muddled response to the incident in Washington; so far, concrete action from the US has been lacking, aside from some fairly strong supportive statements by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In China, there was a range of responses. The most interesting of these was the hundreds of Chinese Internet users who left flowers and gifts at Google's offices in Beijing and Shanghai. Beijing blogger Song Han, an editor for a financial industry magazine, described the scene at the Beijing office on his Facebook page:

A couple of dozen people gathered there already and the Google logo were covered by bouquets of followers, fruits, farewell notes, a bottle of soy sauce and other wish-well souvenirs. The various notes read, "Thanks Google for the Free Flow of Info", "In Google We Trust - See You on the Other Side", "It was a mistake to come here at the first place but it is honorable to choose to leave", and my personal favorite, quoting Alexander Dubcek, the late Czech leader, in response to the Soviet invasion in the wake of Prague Spring pro-democratic movement: "They may crush the flowers, but they can't stop the Spring."

It is unlikely that the government has missed the disturbing (to them) parallels between these overtly funereal gestures and the spontaneous public mourning for liberal party leader Hu Yaobang. Hu's death in April 1989 closely preceded, and directly led to, the Tiananmen Square protests of that year, which nearly triggered the end of Chinese Communist Party rule.

On the other hand, the xenophobic nationalist contingent was also heard from; for example, many Chinese comments on stories about the Google dustup argued that Google's decision was just an excuse for the pullout and the real reason was commercial failure. In favor of this theory was the popularity of Google's domestic competitors in China, especially Baidu.com, which has generally held a greater search engine market share than Google within the country. But according to web analytics company StatCounter, Google had been closing the gap with Baidu in recent months, increasing its share to 43% from 30% last summer. Many comments have appeared on overseas media websites suggesting other conspiracy theories or otherwise defending the government's stance. But given the Chinese government's well-known practice of paying Internet users to post pro-regime comments around the Internet (these employees are known as the "fifty-cent brigade" or "fifty-cent party" in reference to the payment they receive for each post), it is, at the very least, questionable whether the comments are a true reflection of public opinion.

Ultimately, Google's competition with Baidu would not have been sufficient to trigger a pullout; in terms of market share, the company was holding its own in what is rapidly becoming the most important Internet search market in the world. Furthermore, Google is not just another website; it has become a utility in modern life, like electricity or gas service, used on a daily basis by a large segment of the population. Also, the most net-savvy Chinese are well aware of the deficiencies of Google's domestic competitors, as shown by a 2006 study which found that the wealthiest, best-educated Chinese Internet users strongly preferred Google.

Immediate and root causes
What pushed Google over the edge was a hacking attempt on its gmail email service, which originated in China and compromised the accounts of human rights activists focused on the country. For a company with a "don't be evil" philosophy, this was too much to stomach, especially given the personal background of company co-founder Sergey Brin, who was born in Moscow and lived there until he was six.

According to Brin, his anti-authoritarian inclinations began during his Soviet childhood; he has recalled throwing pebbles at a police car. When his father's career plans were derailed by anti-Jewish prejudice, the family began to consider emigrating. Brin's mother wanted to stay in Russia despite the political situation; what tipped the scales in the decision to leave was Sergey's future - the Brins believed that he would have better opportunities in the US.

This proved to be wise, given that Brin is now a billionaire 17 times over. In dealing with Google, it appears that the Chinese government believed its own propaganda that "China is an indispensable market". The Chinese market is indeed very large, and countless companies, and governments, have kowtowed before it. But in Google's case, the google.cn business was just a tiny fraction of Google's global revenues. Brin had "agonized" over the earlier decision to censor search results, which he characterized as "appeasement". In an interview, he told Fortune magazine, "we felt that by participating there ... that it will be better for Chinese web users, because ultimately they would get more information, though not quite all of it." The hacking incident, coupled with moderate-at-best success of Google's China ventures, was apparently enough to reverse this earlier decision.

Moreover, although China's efforts to attract foreign companies have been very successful, there is a strong sense in the expatriate business community (which this writer is a part of) that the companies are not competing on a level playing field; that they will only be tolerated until their technology can be extracted and then the system will collectively see to it that their market share is transferred to a Chinese imitator. To Google's management, it may have seemed that this exact scenario was playing out. Realistically, a conflict between Google and the CCP was inevitable sooner or later; the difference in mindset between these two organizations could not be more fundamental.

The culture of the information technology (IT) industry in general, and Google in particular, is heavily influenced by liberal, multicultural California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology "hacker" ethos ("information wants to be free"). The culture of the CCP, by contrast, is deeply paranoid and suffused with fear of conspiracies against it, exactly as one would expect for an unelected ruling clique which originally took power by force and continues to hold it by the same means. Apparently, Google cooperated with the Chinese government's censorship grudgingly and in the hopes that it would be temporary. Instead, during the President Hu Jintao years, even as China's economy has raced ahead and a wealthy, sophisticated middle-class has arisen from nowhere, the repression of free speech and other basic freedoms guaranteed by China's constitution has only increased, consistent with the nearly total lack of political reform during this period.

Google vs China: the endgame
By John Parker

In the long run, the crucial issue raised by the Google dispute is not what happens to Google's China business. In Chinese politics, Google is an outside party that ultimately has little influence (how many armored divisions does Google have?). The power struggle that really matters in the long run is the tacit negotiation between the CCP and the Chinese people which determines what the government is going to be allowed to get away with. Just because this conflict does not take a form that would be recognizable to observers, who too often falsely assume the existence of a Western, democratic paradigm, does not mean that the conflict doesn't exist.

In fact, the conflict manifests itself in many forms, including widespread (and growing) riots over official abuses of power, and anti-government sentiment on the Internet appearing in response
to controversial issues ranging from the 2008 milk contamination case to the February 2009 CCTV fire in Beijing and the Google dispute. It is obvious that the Chinese government couldn't care less about freedom of speech as a principle; its paramount goal is to preserve itself in power, but it needs to produce economic development in order to do this, and the IT industry, including Google, is a necessary ally in that overall objective.

There is overwhelming popular support for economic development, and one factor staying the government's hand in dealing with Google is that it fears the public will ask: "How are we going to develop our economy and catch up with the West if those guys in Beijing can't even get along with Google?"

Another factor, which many commentators have missed, is the government's fear that Google's exit may start a broader trend that could seriously impact economic growth if it gets out of hand; Western IT companies in China collectively employ hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers, and many of these workers are university-educated technical experts, which means that their sudden unemployment would have a disproportionate political impact. Godaddy.com, one of the biggest domain registration companies in the US, announced recently that it would no longer accept registration requests originating in China. Much more ominously for the PRC, media reports have said that Dell is considering moving some of its manufacturing operations to India.

Certainly, it is hard to exaggerate how deeply the expatriate community in China loathes the Great Firewall; the author can personally testify that the changes in the firewall, and methods for evading it, are perennially popular topics of conversation among expats here. Among businessmen leaving China for greener pastures, especially in the IT field, the Internet controls are cited as one of the most common reasons, suggesting that there is a significant economic cost to the firewall.

In addition, it is not difficult to find evidence of dissatisfaction with the censorship within the elite circles of Chinese society, if one looks for it. At the end of March, during an "IT Leader Summit" in the southern city of Shenzhen, several Chinese business leaders, including Ma Huateng of QQ (an instant messaging service) and Wang Zhidong of the web portal Sina.com.cn, complained about various aspects of the current Internet control system. Wang and Ding Jian, another leader present at the summit, even proposed that Shenzhen be made into a "special zone" with respect to Internet monitoring (the city, as a "special economic zone", already has various commercial freedoms that are not available to mainland China proper).

The prospect of losing access to Google has also caused grumbling among Chinese scientists; a Nature News survey found that 84% said being cut off from Google would "somewhat" or "significantly" hurt their work. One Chinese scientist told Nature, "Research without Google would be like life without electricity."

Having said that, it must be acknowledged that the bulk of the Chinese population, including Internet users, is fundamentally indifferent to the issues raised by the Google case. The famous Chinese blogger Han Han, a Shanghainese high school dropout who became a race-car driver and then an unlikely literary celebrity, assessed the case on his blog with his usual lacerating sarcasm; as often happens, the comment was quickly deleted, but has since been reposted elsewhere. The following excerpt gives the main points (using the danwei.org translation):

Still, how many real Chinese people actually care about the "opening up" of the "censored results"? In a normal country, the few that do could move people's reason, but in China they probably aren't much use. China has 200 million netizens. If Google asked them whether they want to see uncensored content, I'd bet 200 million - minus certain Internet commentators - would answer in the affirmative. Of course, this is just like buying food. People are always happier when you give them more. However, if Baidu offered to give netizens 10 yuan (about US$1.50) as long as they not only installed a new browser that blocked Google, but also used a search engine whose results entirely met - or even exceeded - China's laws and regulations, I bet more than half would accept. Do Chinese people seek out dangerous universal ideals? Chinese people seek them, but they seek them at their convenience ... Perhaps Google thought that freedom, truth, justice, and other such things would mean a lot to a large portion of Chinese netizens. But in reality, these things are nothing compared to a finding a 100 yuan bill on the street. Really, Google would have been better off saying that it was leaving because China Central Television was framing it. That would be a bit more effective. Google's stated reasons for leaving do not resonate with the majority of Chinese citizens - there's nothing there for them to identify with. This is a race of people who can eat genetically modified grain and oil distilled from recycled food scraps, drink melamine-infused milk, and take inferior vaccines. Their tolerance is higher than you can imagine. Their needs are lower than you can imagine.

Based on personal experience, this writer concurs with Han Han's key points that, first, most Chinese place a far lower value on political freedoms than most Westerners (although I do think that the 10 yuan figure is too low), and second, when a Western company (or government) is called upon to explain its actions to the mainland Chinese public, a convoluted conspiracy theory is much more likely to be believed than an open and truthful explanation.

The first fact is largely due to historic poverty, which created a zero-sum mentality about money that routinely leads to vicious struggles over tiny sums; this is a ubiquitous characteristic of daily life for large swaths of China's population, even after 30 years of rapid economic growth. The second fact is entirely attributable to CCP rule (as shown by the sharply reduced prevalence of conspiratorial thinking in Taiwan and Hong Kong); basically, the Party's paranoid bunker mentality and policy of systematic deception have percolated downward to the Chinese people over time, warping China's national culture.

Nevertheless, the long-term importance of the "annoyance factor" should not be underestimated. To the extent that China's post-1978 government has been successful, that success has been largely based on the government's willingness to remove itself from people's private lives - their relationships, careers, and hobbies - and allow the population to basically go about its business as long as certain red lines are not crossed.

From this standpoint, the problem with Internet censorship is that it intrudes on private space. It irritates Chinese Internet users in countless ways: it breaks links; it destroys useful technology like Google Image Search, Facebook and Youtube; it forces people into wild goose chases for "technical problems" that are actually caused by the firewall; and most of all, it practically compels serious surfers to become experts in firewall evasion technology.

The amount of time China's Internet users waste mastering the various methods for "climbing the wall" is staggering; one could even say that evading the censorship has become a kind of extreme sport for in-the-know Chinese hipsters. Recently, a humorous image called "the Desktop of a Great Firewall Climber" has been circulating on Chinese websites: it shows a Windows desktop with no fewer than 32 separate methods for surmounting the firewall. The fact that five of these methods were already known to the author, and he also is aware of at least three other methods that do not appear in this image, is quite indicative of the general level of knowledge about firewall evasion in China. Of course, from an economic standpoint, all the time spent learning how to defeat the firewall is completely nonproductive and acts as a drag on the economy. Observing this phenomenon, writer Tu Zifang commented (China Digital Times translation):

For so many years, the busiest people on the Chinese Internet are those who make the Wall software and the "Climbing the Wall" software. It has been said that those people all have something in common: 1 - They are all Chinese; 2 - They all made a fortune; 3 - They all have studied in the US. The only difference is that those who write the Wall software have come back from the US and those who write the Climbing the Wall software are still in the US. This is we Chinese: We will help whoever pays the salary. As long as it makes money, we can do anything. It only hurts ordinary people: So much money spent on "the Wall" and "Climbing the Wall"!"

The leaked Google censorship directive
Given that the Great Firewall is essentially an elaborate edifice intended to conceal information, it is curious that the nature of the information being concealed is known in great detail. This is because the directives of the Internet Affairs Bureau, the state agency that oversees all Chinese news websites, are frequently leaked by insiders. In the Google case, on March 23, two sets of instructions were issued. The first only mentioned Google as part of a list of various other forbidden topics, including a highway accident in Sichuan that killed several villagers and an essay or article entitled "Wen Jiabao's 'solo' Democracy Performance". This first directive told editors to "only use the Xinhua general text, don't play it up". The second directive, which was issued later in the day, was much more detailed. It describes the case as a "high-impact incident" and gives extensive instructions intended to minimize that impact and ensure that all domestic media outlets toe the party line (China Digital Times translation):

Google has officially announced its withdrawal from the China market. This is a high-impact incident. It has triggered netizens' discussions which are not limited to a commercial level. Therefore please pay strict attention to the following content requirements during this period:

A. News Section
1. Only use Central Government main media (website) content; do not use content from other sources
2. Reposting must not change title
3. News recommendations should refer to Central government main media websites
4. Do not produce relevant topic pages; do not set discussion sessions; do not conduct related investigative reporting;
5. Online programs with experts and scholars on this matter must apply for permission ahead of time. This type of self-initiated program production is strictly forbidden.
6. Carefully manage the commentary posts under news items.

B. Forums, blogs and other interactive media sections:
1. It is not permitted to hold discussions or investigations on the Google topic
2. Interactive sections do not recommend this topic, do not place this topic and related comments at the top
3. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which attack the Party, State, government agencies, Internet policies with the excuse of this event.
4. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which support Google, dedicate flowers to Google, ask Google to stay, cheer for Google and others have a different tune from government policy
5. On topics related to Google, carefully manage the information in exchanges, comments and other interactive sessions
6. Chief managers in different regions please assign specific manpower to monitor Google-related information; if there is information about mass incidents, please report it in a timely manner.

We ask the Monitoring and Control Group to immediately follow up monitoring and control actions along the above directions; once any problems are discovered, please communicate with respected sessions in a timely manner.

Additional guidelines:
- Do not participate in and report Google's information/press releases
- Do not report about Google exerting pressure on our country via people or events
- Related reports need to put [our story/perspective/information] in the center, do not provide materials for Google to attack relevant policies of our country
- Use talking points about Google withdrawing from China published by relevant departments. [1]

Google vs China: the endgame
By John Parker

Is this leaked document genuine? Of course, the mere existence of information on the Internet has no necessary relationship to provenance or truth value. Having said that, the document's consistency with known PRC policy; its high level of detail and thoroughness; its stilted, bureaucratic language ("relevant departments", "managers in different regions"); and the reporting about it by high-profile media organizations including the Daily Telegraph (UK), BBC, and the Washington Post argue that it is genuine. A definitive proof would require the cooperation of Twitter, which was reportedly used for the original leak; Twitter presumably knows the identity of the leaker, at least in the form of a DNS number, but the company has made no public statement about the leak.

Assuming the document is genuine, what does it mean? First, it clearly shows that the CCP itself perceives the Google case as important, and a potential source of public unrest. Second, it shows that Chinese journalists and intellectuals investigate, or comment on, controversial topics at their own peril. Third, it shows that the censorship goes far beyond text articles and includes images, sound and video clips. (Technically, because of the inferior capabilities of image searching technology compared to text search technology, the blocking of images is quite difficult, which suggests a possible strategy for anyone wishing to post forbidden material.) Fourth, it is remarkably explicit about the state policy of completely suppressing alternative views; the "additional guidelines" make it quite clear that as far as the Chinese government is concerned, no Chinese person has the right to hear Google's statements on the issue, insofar as those views differ from the CCP's. In these guidelines, one could easily substitute "The Dalai Lama", "Taiwan", "Wei Jingsheng", or even "Barack Obama" for "Google", and they would still be perfectly applicable. Simply stated, in China, no one is allowed to publish an opinion different from the CCP party line; the difference from democratic societies is quite stark, however much some might not wish to hear this.

Humorous aspects
Historically, when a country tries to suppress free speech, one of the most common ways that country's citizens respond is by disguising forbidden opinions; there are many ways to do so, ranging from fictionalized accounts of current events, to symbolic protests, to artwork, to humor. One of the most remarkable phenomena on the Chinese Internet is the use of humor, especially homonymic puns, to vent frustration over unpopular government policies, and the Google affair has provided additional examples of this.

The most famous is the appearance of the Gu Ge, or "Google Dove". The "Google Dove" is the latest in a series of "Internet mythical creatures"; inventing and naming such creatures as a form of protest has become very popular among Chinese netizens. [2] To understand the "Google Dove", one must first know that Google's Chinese name is pronounced "Gu Ge", but these same two syllables (with different tonal inflection) can also mean "old dove". To satirically protest Google's departure, a number of Chinese netizens began posting pictures of Gu Ge, using dove images overlaid with a rainbow of primary colors reminiscent of the Google logo. As the coinage spread, an entire natural history of the faux-species was elaborated. One such essay is replete with sly references to government policy and past "mythical creatures" but maintains a dry birdwatching-guide-like narrative voice, complete with ornithological terminology (translated by the author with the help of Google Translate):

The "Old Dove" is currently endangered in China. The birds originated in North America, according to biologists, who have found their ancestors living in the equivalent of today's Santa Clara County, California, near Mountain View. During the late 20th and early 21st century, the species spread all over the world, but starting on March 23, 2010, a huge flock suddenly began migrating along the coast to a port in southern China, to avoid extinction in mainland China. This has puzzled scientists. ... According to American Indian legend, this bird has a very important habit, described in an Indian language as "don't be evil"; translated into Chinese, it means "afraid of River Crabs". When the species encountered an environment with too many river crabs, they could not survive as well as grass-mud horses, so instead, they went south. Some animal lovers around the world have called this a disgrace to the biosphere. The "Old Dove" has a gentle personality, flies fast and has accurate navigation capabilities, sharp vision, and a strong ability to find things ... along with poultry, it is one of the species most beloved by the masses, and has made an indelible contribution to the development of human civilization."

It may be necessary to explain the two previous "mythical creatures" referred to in this piece, the "River Crab" and the "Grass Mud Horse". Since the CCP justifies curtailed freedoms in China by invoking the need to maintain a "harmonious society", victims of Internet censorship are popularly said to have been "harmonized". In Chinese "harmonized" is pronounced "hexie"; the same syllables with different inflection can mean "river crab". The word for "crab", in countryside slang, can also mean a bully who maintains power using violence. So the "River Crab" has become a symbol for crude censorship backed by the threat of force. "Grass Mud Horse" is also a homonym; in this case of the phrase cao ni ma, which can also mean "f--- your mother", depending on the tones used. The "Grass Mud Horse" has become probably the best-known symbol of defiance to the censors, and its massive popularity was only enhanced by the unprintably profane nature of the homonym. Countless essays and blog postings were made about the "Grass Mud Horse" (most deleted as soon as they were found), and the creature has appeared on T-shirts and even limited-edition plush toys. Blogger Zhan Bin, a teacher at the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, created a brand-new Chinese character for it, using the radicals for "grass", "mud", and "horse", and proposed this as the 2009 "character of the year".

A number of videos, including mock documentaries, also appeared; the most notorious of these, a "Song of Grass Mud Horse" music video with deliriously obscene lyrics and a children's song-like refrain, supposedly received 1.4 million hits. [3] As Song Han described it, the somber atmosphere when he and other sympathetic Chinese delivered flowers to Google's Beijing office ended on an upbeat note when one young man led the group in a rousing chorus of the "Song of Grass Mud Horse". More than just discontent over Internet policy, the "mythical creatures" phenomenon represented a kind of generalized rage at the state of the nation amongst younger Chinese, strikingly reminiscent of the punk-rock movement in the West. To the extent that the UK in the 1970s was also a money-obsessed society in moral crisis, swept by disturbing social changes, the comparison may be quite apt.

Westerners also milked the Google/China confrontation for humor, especially on April 1, when a piece appeared on the eSarcasm website asserting that the entire dispute was "a hoax" and quoted Brin as supposedly saying: "Really, we're just kidding. Did you honestly believe we'd abandon a market with 1.3 billion people in it for Falun Gong and the Dalai Lama? I don't think so. As of April 2 we are relaunching our Google.cn site, with full content-filtering in place ... Boy did we have you guys fooled." The same day, a Jeremy Goldkorn piece on danwei.org claimed that Google planned to redirect the energies of its entire staff towards the development of geothermal energy technology. Another relevant eSarcasm contribution was entitled "Sweet China o' Mine", parodying the 80s hit Sweet Child o' Mine by Guns N' Roses. A short sample:

They've got some smiles that it seems to me
Are there for the sake of the tyranny
That tells them they can't look at Internet porn, oh my

Now that Sergey's expressed disgrace
The rest of the world is so keen to embrace
Google sayin' so long
And waving Jintao bye-bye

Oh, oh oh oh, sweet China o' mine
Oh, oh, oh, oh, sweet commies of mine

China and the Western left
Quite possibly, the most lasting consequence of the China/Google dispute may be to deepen a breach between the Chinese government and the political left in the West. Grumbling about CCP rule on the left side of the aisle has been evident for some time, but the chorus seems to be growing louder in the last few years.

Historically, Western progressives were sympathetic to the Chinese government because of its officially socialist alignment, which included support for many leftist positions such as equal rights for women, supporting workers over "bosses", protecting minority cultures (supposedly), and so on. However, there is an increasing awareness that in modern China as it actually exists, these positions are being heavily eroded.

Women's rights advocates have uncomfortably noted the return of rampant prostitution and concubinage, with CCP officials among the most prominent perpetrators. Labor groups have noticed that not only does Beijing instantly crush any attempt to form a labor group independent of the government, but also, since the introduction of former president and general secretary Jiang Zemin's "Three Represents" political philosophy in the early 2000s, it has even accepted businessmen as Party members. Since the Party already has a vise-like grip on economic opportunities due to its control of land and commercial financing, this measure has had the effect, in the real world, of creating an incestuous class of untouchable kleptocrats, within which there is little distinction between capitalist exploitation and CCP-cadre exploitation.

As for the protection of minorities, it hardly needs to be said that for Uyghurs, Tibetans, and others, such policies have long since been revealed as a cruel joke masking the reality of Han domination. One symbolic example occurred during this year's Chinese New Year celebration gala, when a government-approved group of Uyghur folk singers joylessly praised CCP rule with lyrics like "The Party's policies are yakexi" (yakexi is the Uyghur word for "good"). The song's inanity quickly became the object of derision among Chinese netizens; Han Han's response was to suggest that yakexi could become the new Internet meme of 2010, replacing "Grass Mud Horse". He then organized a contest to suggest snarky replacement lyrics for the song, with cash prizes for the winners.

In the eyes of the left, however, the most damning argument against Beijing may be the increasingly close relationship between it and large Western corporations, who adore China's huge population of docile, intimidated workers. The involvement of these firms in China has grown so much so quickly that even today, after years of articles about China's imminent rise, very few Westerners realize the vast size and range of corporate investments in China. The Google case might be seen as evidence against this thesis, but in reality, it is the exception that proves the rule: Google left precisely because it is an atypical US corporation, one that takes liberal principles far more seriously than most. The list of multinationals with no such scruples is very, very long.

As if to underline the point, a few days ago, singer Bob Dylan, an icon of the 1960s counterculture, was denied permission to perform in China. Most observers attributed this to a new suspicion of foreign artists that arose two years ago, when Icelandic singer Bjork shouted support for Tibet at a concert in Shanghai. But an incident that more starkly revealed the vast gap in basic beliefs between the Western left and the CCP government would be hard to imagine; for Beijing, protest songs are fine - but only when they are directed against what it sees as its foreign adversaries.

Note: 1. to read one posting of the document, click here
2. An example of Gu Ge as illustrated in Chongqing Evening News
3. Song of The Grass-Mud Horse

John Parker is a China-based freelance writer.

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