I've been starting to follow this controversy over China's decision to limit and censor websites/pages/content that does not agree with their political agendas.
In the past, Google has complied with their policies and has filtered search results accordingly, but after there were some mysterious hacking into private GMAIL accounts (belonging to employees of Google) with emails forwarded, Google has done an about face and stated that they will no longer filter web content and will then proceed to pull their China presence out if there is an ramifications from the Chinese government.
First of all, I'm unsure how much the Chinese government would really be fazed by a Google pull-out. I'm sure that in a lot of respects that they would probably prefer this as they would be removing a thorn in their sides. I don't get the sense (although I'm not a very political person!) that the Chinese government cares too much about the freedom of access of the population.
Now, the Americans (the Clinton's among others) are publicly criticizing the Chinese government over their restrictive views and as expected, the Chinese are firing back at the Americans.
From what I understand, China is a growing market in the global economy and certainly, they have a large percentage of the world's population. I wonder how long it will be before the Chinese government attempts to use political/economic pressure to stifle this criticism.
Although I think that unrestricted Internet access is a good thing, as with many things in life, that's not an absolute. Web content containing child pornography, libel, inciting terrorism, etc... cannot be condoned but where is the distinction between the line that we (the "democratic society") draw in the sand and what the Chinese are trying to do? At one point is censorship appropriate? I'm not sure that this is such an easy question to answer!
Now, the Americans (both Clintons among others) are publicly criticizing the Chinese over
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