Google vs. China

By ROGER COHEN
NYT

CHONGQING, CHINA — Seated in the cobwebbed little office of Liu Wei, a professor of business administration at Chongqing University in central China, listening to him document the city’s boom, I found my mind wandering as I gazed at his computer screen, open to a Google page.

From Chicago to Chongqing (which, with its population of over 30 million in the municipal area and more than 5 million in the city itself, dwarfs the windy city), Google makes the world go round. Today, there are citizens and “Netizens.” The battle is on, at least in China, to see who will prevail.

China has become a very curious case. As Liu noted to me, “We are included in globalization, an American-led concept, and we have benefited immensely.” Yet Beijing resists the very openness on which it depends. Openness for China is a means to an end — prosperity and development — but not a value.

This is the Chinese paradox Google now appears bent on challenging. Google is right to do so.

(More here.)