They were never going to be the easiest of bedfellows. When Google, the
modern face of Western freedom, first decided to launch a censored version
of its search engine inside communist China, civil liberties campaigners
were appalled.
[excerpt]
That was in 2006. Yesterday the sudden and unexpected resignation of
Kai-Fu Lee, the head of Google China, reignited the debate about how a
business model built on providing unfettered access to information can
possibly thrive in a regime that thrives on control - and whether it
should try to.
Mr Lee, 47, who was born in Taiwan but educated in the US, is seen in
China as an Alan Sugar-type business celebrity - and after four years at
the helm was said yesterday to be leaving to start a venture capital fund
to help young Chinese entrepreneurs start new web-based businesses.
But his surprise departure from a high-flying role in one of the world's
most influential companies has led inevitably to new questions about the
tensions between Google and China's communist leadership.
It follows 12 months in which Google China, despite its decision to accept
restrictions on its search engine to conform with communist censorship,
has come under increasingly hostile fire from the Beijing government.
The company denied that Mr Lee's departure was a sign of anything other
than his desire to embark on something new. But on his blog he wrote that
he wanted to be "actively involved in the work and to have full control
over it" - a hint, some suspect, that he did not feel completely in charge
of events.
Mathew McDougall, the chief executive of SinoTech Group, China's largest
independent digital marketing agency, told The Sunday Telegraph: "He seems
like a guy who tried very hard and in the end got frustrated in the role.
"Since he arrived at Google he's had a difficult job - and myriad bad
publicity in the last quarter. None of that has made his life easier and
it looks as if he's gone off to do something for himself that is free of
the constraints that come with trying to do business in the Chinese
internet market."
In January, three years after Google China (Google.cn) was launched,
Beijing authorities fired a warning shot.
As part of an initiative "to purify the internet's cultural environment"
the government accused the search engine of failing to use effective
measures to block searches for "vulgar, pornographic sites".
In June, state censors went further, announcing "punitive measures" over
the same concern, and blocking all access to the site for several hours. A
spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry accused the search engine of
spreading "large amounts of vulgar content that is lascivious and
pornographic, seriously violating China's relevant laws and regulations".
Google, which had been careful to heavily self-censor during the 20th
anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre a few weeks earlier,
swallowed the ticking off.
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