Chinese minister insists Google obey the law

To leave or not to leave. That is a question. Whether or not Google Inc. will leave China market has become a hot topic these days.

In the January announcement on Google's official blog made by David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, it reads that"...These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."

In response to the announcement made above, Chinese government replied without hesitation. "If you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to pay consequences", Li Yizhong, the minister of Industry and Information Technology, said on the sidelines of China's annual legislature. Li insisted that Beijing needs to censor Internet content to protect the rights of the country and its people. "If there is information that harms stability or the people, of course we have to block it." he said.

There is no consensus on China's censorship of Internet content, with each party sticks on their own stand. We don't know whether Google will leave the country of great profit opportunities, but one thing can be sure of is that China government does not want any form of harm to be placed on the nation's stability. Among the four functions of the media defined by Charles Wright, correlation and cultural transmission have more to do with influencing the way people evaluate issues, no matter big or small the issue is. Media is influential enough that it can sometimes manipulate people's perceptions on certain issues. Marshall McLuhan also argues that the medium has the power to change the way we live and experience the world. In such way of thinking, we can understand why China government insists on filtering the messages on the websites. China is a Sovereign nation that may not come to agreement with some western countries on some affairs, but western countries cannot instill their opinions to the people in China, in a way of cultural imperialism. So China has the right to formulate its own laws, to formulate its own system for punishing violators, and those companies that do not wish to abide by those laws are quite free to choose not to continue their business there.

Besides, China is not the only country that has such disagreement with Google, similar cases also exist in countries such as Germany, England, France, Korea, and America. Each country has its own regulations, whether to stay and accept the rules or to leave the country, its Google's choice.