China Stands By Censorship Policies As Google Threatens to Leave

In a somewhat indirect response to Google's (www.google.com) announcement that it will stop complying with Chinese censorship of its operations there, the Chinese government has said it welcomes Internet companies from outside the country, however, they must obey laws that restrict their content.

According to a Bloomberg report, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said at a regular briefing in Beijing today, "The Chinese government administers the Internet according to law and we have explicit stipulations over what content can be spread on the Internet." And while she said Chinese law prohibits online attacks such as hacking, she declined to say whether those rules also apply to state agencies.

Earlier this week, Google said that following an investigation into a mid-December attack launched from China, it found evidence that the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were routinely accessed by third parties. Combined with attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web, these attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered has led it to re-examine "the feasibility" of its operations in China. In an effort not to "be evil" Google essentially told China it had to stop policies that infringed on universal human rights even given the risk of angering China's business community and even causing a rift in US-China relations.

According to today's statement, however, it seems that China is standing by its Internet regulations, which seems to have already had an effect on Google's Chinese workforce.

While Google denies that its employees in China would effectively stop working, Mashable was sent a tip that all Google China workers have been given holiday leave, and Bloomberg reports that the company has intensified internal security testing of its networks following complaints that its website had been attacked by local hackers.