China ramped up its censorship considerably in the lead-up to today, both of words and Internet services. Google is by far the biggest company to find its services halted – as anyone trying to access Gmail without a VPN knows well — and Google has by far the best response to it. We really want this to be true, anyway — via Jonah Kessel:

Google apparently playing hardball with china with today’s recommended Chinese phrase of the day in Google Translate App. Can’t really be a coincidence #june4

“Harmonious society” is the government’s official vision for Chinese society, one in which everyone is part of one giant happy family and history is one big bright bouncy castle.

It’s also a hollow phrase that tries to deny reality. So yeah, we don’t really have any use for it, either.

UPDATE, 10:45 pm: As has been pointed out, Google Translate doesn’t have a “phrase of the day.” Nonetheless.

Reader James Weir noticed something peculiar when he image searched “China” on Google.ca, i.e. Canadian Google: “People Eating Babies” and “People Eating Dogs” were among the top results.

In an ideal world where no one falls for Internet tricks, this would go without saying, but people do not eat babies here, in the same way that people don’t in the US or the UK or Japan or anywhere else in the world. If you choose to believe what’s in the news, you might find capsules of powdered human flesh, but cannibalism as a cultural practice in our day and age is basically extinct, isolated to some island tribes.

So, in conclusion: what the hell, Canada? Google?

Here’s what a normal image search of China should yield:

And once again, Canada.

(H/T James W.)

Google chairman Eric Schmidt has a new book ready to debut in April, The Digital Age, co-written by Jared Cohen, formerly of the State Department. As the Wall Street Journal puts it succinctly, the book is clear about one thing: “China is the most dangerous superpower on Earth.”

Specifically, Schmidt writes that China’s hacking culture — New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Washington Post have all recently fallen victim — will give it a strategic advantage:

“The disparity between American and Chinese firms and their tactics will put both the government and the companies of the United States as a distinct disadvantage,” because “the United States will not take the same path of digital corporate espionage, as its laws are much stricter (and better enforced) and because illicit competition violates the American sense of fair play,” they claim.

“This is a difference in values as much as a legal one.”

The book says the US’s hands aren’t exactly clean:

The U.S. is far from an angel, the book acknowledges. From high-profile cases of cyber-espionage such as the Stuxnet virus that targeted Iranian nuclear facilities, to exports of surveillance software and technology to states with bad human rights records, there is plenty at home to criticize.

But they’re not engaged in the same scale of corporate (and media) espionage. Should they be? Here’s the controversial part:

In this roundabout way the pair come close, on occasion, to suggesting western governments follow China’s lead and form closer relationships between state policy and corporate activity.

Take the equipment and software that comprises the Internet. Most of the world’s IT systems were once based almost entirely on Western infrastructure, but as Chinese firms get more competitive, that is changing, and not necessarily for the better, they say.

The authors probably won’t find a more vociferous critic than WSJ itself: one editor, in a rather breathlessly written editorial, recently stated, “The Middle Kingdom might once have been the center of human civilization. But in the digital world, the Chinese are the barbarians at the gate.”

And then you remember that all non-Romans, to Rome, were “barbarians.” We know how that story turned out.

Exclusive: Eric Schmidt Unloads on China in New Book (WSJ, image Wired)

In November, Angry Asian Man noticed a very peculiar Android app that was being sold in Google Play: “Make Me Asian.” The program works by superimposing straw hats and fu manchus on user-uploaded pictures, which, um… yeah, don’t do that.

Oh hells no. At the risk of giving this damn thing more attention than it deserves, behold this ridiculously racist Android app… which allows users to make themselves “a Chinese, Japanese, Korean or any other Asians!” No, seriously. This is a real app.

In late-December, pastor Peter Chin from Washington DC posted a petition on Change.org calling for Google to remove both “Make Me Asian” and “Make Me Indian” from Play. (Google does not monitor the third-party apps in its online store.) “This is not what it means to be Asian or Native American – these are nothing less than hateful and offensive stereotypes that are used to this very day to marginalize and humiliate people,” Chin wrote. “They are not funny, and their use highlights a vicious double standard in the treatment of certain minority groups.”

It’s taken nearly a month, but Google has finally capitulated: the apps are gone. As Chin updates:

I’m deeply thankful to the nearly 10,000 who who signed this Change.org petition to take down these apps. I am also grateful for Google, who heard our outrage and pulled the apps. This may seem like a small victory, but it made an important statement: that minorities will not simply accept dated and offensive stereotypes that are wrongly foisted upon them. We stood up, our voices were heard, and something changed. I hope that our society will take notice and realize that previously voiceless communities will not remain silent any longer.

Meanwhile, perhaps you’d like to try Gizoogle?

Also see: stereotyping, casual racism.

Google, the company, has quietly stopped its practice of displaying warning messages to Chinese users who search for sensitive terms on its service. “At the same time, they deleted the help article which explained how to use the feature,” writes GreatFire.org. “This indicates a new development in the relationship between the Chinese government and Google.”

Cool?

According to the Guardian, “A Google spokesman confirmed it removed the notification features in December, but declined to comment further due to the sensitivity of the situation in China.”

Could Google be laying the path to reentering the mainland? This is a good thing, right?

You probably already know that many people don’t think so. GreatFire again:

Google has been depicted as a model company that stands up to the Chinese government and upholds its famous motto “Don’t be evil”. This impression reached a climax in May this year when Google introduced a new warning message aimed at users in China. Typing one of the many keywords blocked by the Great Firewall, this message would inform the user that continuing the search would probably break the user’s connection. It was a bold step towards exposing the censorship that the authorities desperately try to hide. At the time, Foreign Policy asked whether in this “second clash between the Internet search giant and the Chinese government, will freedom of speech win?”.

Can we pause here? I get the temptation to anoint allies and saviors in fights against the machine, but Google is and has always been a company, not John Stuart Mill. Many Chinese netizens believe — rightfully, in my opinion — that Google never should have left the mainland in 2010 if it sought to make an actual difference in its professed fight against Internet censorship. Instead, it took a moralistic stance that secured it the gushing praise of American technology writers but scorn and ridicule within China, not to mention a widespread belief that it was pulling out of the market simply because it couldn’t hack it — that crying “censorship” was just its way of saving face.

Google is a company. It’s a company that routinely practices censorship — please look at YouTube and its vague, randomly enforced “community guidelines” — and imposes lamentable policies such as real-name Google-Plus registration. It’s a company that has investors and therefore cares about profit. Can we please — before we get in a habit — drop this idea that it cares about Chinese freedom of speech for China’s sake? Off the top of my head, I can think of at least a few things it cares about more than your and my ability to hop over the Great Firewall, such as, oh, its image, its bottom line, its ability to function, its existence as a company.

Let’s drop the pretense. If it now seems, as GreatFire claims, that “Google’s reputation as a fighter of censorship may not be fully earned,” it’s because we were duped to believe it was a fighter of censorship in the first place. We don’t need it to be, you know. We just need it to be here — like a decent parent — functioning (i.e. not blocked), chipping away at nefarious restrictions instead of trying to topple the entire system, being good in the practical, useful sense.

(Image via GreatFire)

Yesterday, China took down Google, the decision of a Net Nanny who gets off by watching Internet users like you squirm and suffer. But the collective howl of pain and rage that emanated from behind the Great Firewall was actually heard, because this morning, authorities unblocked Google’s services, including Gmail.

So what happened? The website GreatFire.org – which we wrote about it in March and has been our go-to site for checking censorship within China ever since — asks the same thing in a post titled “Google unblocked again – was it a mistake or a test?“:

The DNS poisoning that was imposed on most Google websites yesterday appears to have been lifted. The blocking was likely reversed some time this morning. Due to the nature of DNS there is a delay before this trickles down to every ISP and every computer so if you still cannot access Google in China it’s likely just a question of time. You can also try to flush your DNS cache and it should work again.

Even though the blocking of Google Search may only have lasted for 12 hours or so, it was likely the single one decision by the Great Firewall authorities affecting the most users ever.

Read the post if you want three plausible theories. We like this one the best:

Was it a mistake?

The blocking of the worlds number one (and Chinas number two) search engine took place on a Friday night. It’s possible that someone simply pressed the wrong button and accidentally DNS poisoned the wrong website. Perhaps they only meant to block mail.google.com. If it was a mistake, that would explain why it was seemingly reversed this morning. In that case, at least one employee of the Golden Shield Project must have lost their job today.

Great Fire immediately offers reasons why this probably didn’t happen, but I’m amused by the suggestion that someone in an office “accidentally” caused thousands of businesses to hemorrhage money, locked millions of users out of their email accounts, and — worst of all — forced us all to use Bing. I can imagine the scene, which of course includes the obligatory, “We’re putting new coversheets on all the TPS reports… if you could go ahead and try to remember to do that.”

For more info, Samuel Wade of China Digital Times (which is unfortunately blocked in China) has compiled a list of stories on this subject. He links to this NY Times article — blocked in China as well — in which a Google spokesperson says, “We’ve checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end.” For a great further read, including some suggested workarounds (for the inevitable next time), here’s Great Fire again:

Many VPNs and other circumvention tools have been working poorly or not at all in the last few days. The free iPhone app OpenDoor is still working, though it has also suffered glitches recently. Another method of accessing Google Search is to use one of their other country versions such as http://www.google.co.uk https://www.google.co.uk or http://www.google.ca https://www.google.ca. These may also be blocked of course.

You can also access Google directly using one of their IP addresses. These don’t appear to be blocked (yet). Here are some:

• http://74.125.228.64
• http://74.125.228.65
• http://74.125.228.66
• http://74.125.228.67
• http://74.125.228.68
• http://74.125.228.69
• http://74.125.228.70
• http://74.125.228.71
• http://74.125.228.72
• http://74.125.228.73
• http://74.125.228.78

Ever been throttled by the Net Nanny in China while doing a simple Google search? Your IP gets cut (or gagged? dick-vised? Sorry, I’m not familiar with Internet’s more technical terms) and you’re unable to use Google for up to a minute or more. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you’re in the middle of doing just one thing that requires the use of the Internet — like, say, you’re making a bar quiz, and you’re late, and you just need to find out how many sons the Swiss Robinson Crusoe family had because it’s Children’s Day and you need a child-themed question — and the Internet craps on your face cause China’s an asshole, forcing you to use Baidu or — merciful God forbid — Bing, and you can’t get on your VPN cause you’re in the goddamn office where VPN services are strangled in a dark back-room and its body raped by warty Gorgons who shout codswallop about the glory of headless chickens and ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS FIND OUT HOW MANY GODDAMN SONS THE SWISS ROBINSON CRUSOE FAMILY HAD, well, it’s times like these that one is liable to get irritated.

For those of you living in a place where the Internet is free and fast, where you can watch all the YouTube videos of Maru’s 5th birthday and Gotye parodies you want, you might be thinking: Who is this sourpuss who can’t relax and enjoy the good parts of being alive and swell like a flowery pistil open to a resplendent spring rain? To those of you: FUCK YOU. Go ram your head against a brick wall, you fucking assholes who have never experienced anger in your grass-grazing existence. Youku video for those of you in China after the jump, if it gets past the censors. Oh, I almost forgot — this post is about Google.

So starting today we’ll notify users in mainland China when they enter a keyword that may cause connection issues. By prompting people to revise their queries, we hope to reduce these disruptions and improve our user experience from mainland China. Of course, if users want to press ahead with their original queries they can carry on.

In order to figure out which keywords are causing problems, a team of engineers in the U.S. reviewed the 350,000 most popular search queries in China. In their research, they looked at multiple signals to identify the disruptive queries, and from there they identified specific terms at the root of the issue.