Google China on brink of withdrawing
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Google reiterated its threat to pull out of China in protest of censorship over the weekend, with the Internet search giant reportedly now certain to leave.
Beijing's stance was vague Sunday when Premier Wen Jiabao indirectly commented that China will become a "fair playing ground" for foreign investors and will grant foreign enterprises "national treatment." On Friday China's top Internet regulator indicated Google might have to bear the consequences for breaching rules.
According to a Financial Times report on Friday, Google's talks with the Chinese government over censorship concerns have reached an "apparent impasse" and the company is now "99.9 percent" certain to shut its Chinese search engine Google.cn.
The newspaper cited a company insider as saying that the company had drawn up detailed plans for closing its Chinese search engine and it was likely to take some time to follow through with its plans and take steps to protect local employees from retaliation by the authorities.
Without giving a clear mention of Google, Premier Wen said Sunday that China welcomed foreign investors to conduct business in line with Chinese law.
The government's latest response came after Li Yizhong, head of the Information Technology Ministry, warned Google it would have to face the consequences for breaching any rules as it "insists in doing what violates China's laws and regulations, and it is up to the company to leave China or not."
At time of going to press, Google had not released a statement in response. But Wang Jinhong, a Beijing-based spokeswoman for Google, said that Google China's business was still "normal."
She denied media reports that some Google employees will resign in droves when they get the company's year-end bonus on March 28.
Talk of Google withdrawing from China eased in February after it reportedly started hiring employees at its Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou offices.
In January, a battle over the filtering of sensitive search results led to Google saying it would quit China over "highly sophisticated cyber attacks."
The Vice president of Google, Nicole Wong, said earlier this month that the company's position hadn't changed and it was "prepared" to leave the country over censorship of its search results.
The chief executive of Google, Eric Schmidt, said this week he hoped to soon announce results of talks with Chinese authorities on offering an uncensored search engine in China, Reuters reported.
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