Hong Kong:
Chinese searches for politically sensitive terms peaked the day Google stopped filtering its search results, but the government pressed on with a campaign to remove online praise of the company.
Searches for "Tiananmen," "Falun Gong," and "corruption" increased by more than ten times on Tuesday, March 23, here the day that Google began offering uncensored Chinese-language search results.
But searches for censored terms on Google's uncensored Hong Kong search engine fell off quickly in the next few days in part because most Chinese did not rush to search for politically sensitive material and also because the pages newly revealed by Google are still mostly blocked in China.
In tests over the weekend from several Chinese cities, users who attempted to search for "Tiananmen" or even the names of Chinese government leaders reliably found google.com.hk mysteriously inaccessible for a few minutes. The more frequently used Chinese search engine, Baidu, which continues to censor its results, remained accessible no matter what users searched for.
"I heard that Google is leaving China. But I don't care. Why should I? I'm fine with Baidu," said Xiong Huan, 27, a software engineer in Shenyang. "And for now, there's not much change on Google either, as long as you don't search for sensitive info."
Nonetheless, a significant number of people took advantage of Google's newly unfiltered service on its first day of operation. There were about 2.5 million searches for phrases containing "Tiananmen," and about 4.7 million searches for the banned religious group "Falun Gong," according to estimates based on data from the public Google Trends and Google Keyword Tool Box.
But these are tiny numbers compared to almost 400 million Chinese Internet users, and search activity quickly returned to average levels over the next few days.
Searches for "Google" in English and Chinese were far more popular, totaling more than 20 million on Tuesday, suggesting that Google users were much more concerned about their continued access to Google's search services than their ability to find politically sensitive information.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government has embarked on a concerted online campaign to eradicate pro-Google sentiments from the Internet.
Comments on social networking services that are supportive of Google "will be deleted in a couple of seconds," said Oiwan Lam, 38, an independent journalist and researcher who is an expert on Chinese independent media.
The China Digital Times reported last week that the Chinese State Council Information Office had ordered all online news sites to "carefully manage the information in exchanges, comments and other interactive sessions" and "clean up text, images and sound and videos which support Google, dedicate flowers to Google, ask Google to stay, cheer for Google and others that have a different tune from government policy."
Chinese authorities routinely direct news coverage and public discussion of sensitive topics, but the restrictions relating to Google are particularly severe.
Javen Yang, 27, Web master of a Guangzhou travel Web site, said that site staff were instructed on Friday to remove all comments relating to Google. "We have been told to delete posts relating to 'some American company leaving China' by the general Web master, who usually receive notices from the government," he said.
The State Council Information Office could not be reached for comment.
With domestic discussion closely controlled, the contrast between the sentiments expressed on Chinese and foreign networks is striking. The popular Chinese discussion site Tianya.cn, with 35 million registered users, had only a few dozen posts mentioning Google on Saturday afternoon. All of them expressed negative or neutral opinions of the company, whereas Chinese Twitter users generally applauded Google's decision to offer uncensored results. Twitter, the microblogging service, has been vocal in its opposition to censorship. It, like Facebook and YouTube, cannot be reached from mainland China without special software.
Rhetoric aside, Google's move will make little difference in the short run to the average Chinese.
Even if the Chinese can reliably access Google's newly unfiltered search, it will be difficult for them to read pages the government does not want them to see. Domestic Web sites are easily gagged, while foreign sites are blocked by the country's sophisticated firewall.
"Even though Google has stopped censoring, people cannot get access to sensitive news" without using firewall circumvention software, said Lam. "The Great Firewall is still there."
The government has never admitted the existence of the Great Firewall, nor the censorship directives issued to news organizations and Web sites. Unlike other nations that filter their citizens' Internet access, China never gives users any notice that sites have been blocked. Instead, connections fail as just as if there were technical problems with the network.
Ultimately, indifference may prove more effective than any firewall.
"I don't worry that Google will be blocked in China completely," said Luo Peng, 27, a Beijing salesman. "Just like YouTube and Facebook, my life is fine without them. I can always use other similar services that are available."