Are Google and Gmail really the enemy of China?

First China targeted Facebook and Twitter – now it's going after the world's largest e-mail service. The targeting of Gmail is part of a broader ideological struggle to separate the Middle Kingdom from the modes of the West. 

|
Andy Wong/AP
In this March 23, 2010 file photo, a security guard walks past while foreign visitors are seen inside the Google China headquarters in Beijing. Connections to Google Inc.'s popular email service have been blocked in China amid efforts by the government to limit access to the company's services.

China has cemented another brick into the Great Firewall of censorship that blocks its citizens’ access to large swaths of the Internet, sealing off Google’s Gmail service.

Google traffic in and out of China plummeted on Dec. 26 and has flatlined since, according to Google’s records.

“We’ve checked and there is no problem at our end,” said Taj Meadows, Google spokesman for Asia. The Chinese Ministry of Information and Technology, responsible for the technical aspects of Internet censorship, did not reply to faxed questions.

The abrupt halt in services left millions of Chinese Gmail users stranded. Among them was Song Ming, a furniture trader in Bengbu in the southern province of Anhui, who suddenly found himself cut off from his customers. “I had no time to inform my clients,” he said. “If Gmail has problems … it is too risky to keep using it.”

Also angered by the censors’ move was a travel agent in the western city of Xian. “This really affects my business very much,” he said asking not to be identified for fear of official retribution. “I’d switched to Gmail because I thought it was worldwide.”

It had been getting harder and harder to use Google products such as Gmail, Search, and Google Docs since the summer. Now only special Virtual Private Network software, which circumvents the censor, gives access to those services in China.

Gmail does not have a huge number of users here. The service enjoys less than 2 percent of the Chinese e-mail market, according to a study by Internet traffic analyst Hitwise reported last year.

But the new block is symptomatic of the Chinese authorities’ attitude to the Internet. “This is not a major blow to the business, but it is a further tightening of the screw,” said one source familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak on the record.

“It is as if they have decided Google is the enemy, it is really grim,” added Jeremy Goldkorn, an Internet entrepreneur in Beijing.

It is clear that the Chinese government led by President Xi Jinping sees the Internet as a key battlefield in its ideological struggle with the West.

“The Internet has become the main battlefield in the struggle for public opinion,” President Xi told fellow leaders at a meeting to discuss ideology in August last year. “On this battlefield of the Internet, whether we can stand up and gain victory relates directly to our country’s ideological security and regime security.” 

Beijing’s strategy depends on shutting China off from the rest of the world’s Internet when it is seen as a threat to the government.

“I can choose who will be a guest in my home,” said Lu Wei, the government’s top Internet regulator last month, justifying blocks on such websites as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

At an international Internet conference in November held in the southern city of Wuzhen, Chinese organizers promoted a statement calling on nations to “respect Internet sovereignty of all countries."

This was seen as a bid to block international criticism of the Chinese government’s strict web censorship. The statement was eventually withdrawn; conference participants said it had been clumsily presented with no opportunity for debate.

But with or without international approval, Beijing is clearly determined to build China’s Internet according to its own model, said a businessman in the industry.

“China is a country with its own rules and if you want to do business here, you have to abide by them,” said Lawrence Sheed, founder of a company that hosts websites and mail service in China. “They want to control the information. If they cannot approve it, if it is not under their control, it is not allowed."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Are Google and Gmail really the enemy of China?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2014/1229/Are-Google-and-Gmail-really-the-enemy-of-China
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe