Reactions in China to the possibility of a Google withdrawal show a divide between popular sympathy and nationalist backlash.
Photographs posted today on the img.ly service show people laying flowers at the Google headquarters in the Wu Dao Kou area in northern Beijing. Chinese Internet users who respect Google appear to be mourning an impending departure.
Nationalistic flag-waving is also showing up. Roland Soong’s bridge blog EastSouthWestNorth posts excerpts from several Chinese bloggers who say Google is making excuses because it isn’t performing well against its Chinese competitor, Baidu.com; that Google’s accusatory tone is insulting; that Google is throwing a hissy-fit; and that Google failed to adapt its business model.
Rebecca MacKinnon, starting in February as a visiting fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, collects several perspectives on Google at the RConversation blog, and published this op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal. China correspondent Tania Branigan collected video reactions to the news in this piece for the Guardian. Some punchy analysis from William Moss, a public relations strategist in Beijing who writes Imagethief:
“Google has taken the China corporate communications playbook, wrapped it in oily rags, doused it in gasoline and dropped a lit match on it. In China, foreign companies tend to be deferential to the authorities to the point of obsequiousness, in a way that you would almost certainly never encounter in the United States or Europe…. Demonstrating ‘alignment with the Chinese government’s agenda’ is an accepted tenet of corporate positioning and corporate social responsibility work in China.
“In this situation Google has undertaken a bet-the-farm confrontational communications approach in China. They will not have made this decision lightly. Dressed up in the polite language above is what is essentially an ultimatum: Allow us to present uncensored search results to our Chinese users or we’ll walk. The Chinese government is not likely to cave to an ultimatum from a foreign company, no matter how decorously delivered.”
Thanks to Sheji Ho.
