China Issues Another Warning to Google on Censorship

One of China’s top Internet regulators warned bluntly on Friday that any move by Google to stop censoring its Chinese search engine would be “irresponsible” and would draw a response from Beijing, reports The New York Times.

The statement by Li Yizhong, China’s minister of industry and information technology, followed a statement on Wednesday by Google’s chief executive officer, Eric Schmidt, that “something will happen soon” in the two-month standoff over internet censorship between his company and the Chinese government.

But it was no more clear on Friday what that something might be than it was two months ago, when Google executives first threatened to pull out of China unless the government stopped forcing it to censor the results of users’ internet searches.

A company spokesperson said Wednesday that Google expected the dispute to be settled “in weeks, not months.”

“I hope Google will abide by Chinese laws and regulations,” The Associated Press quoted Mr. Li as saying. But “if you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to bear the consequences.”

Whether the company chooses to remain in China, he added, will be up to Google.