Google drama brings China-US diplomatic talks

• Source: Global Times
• [08:34 January 21 2010]
• Comments

By Sun Wei

A Chinese man, under the watchful eyes of a security guard, talks to the media after he places bouquets of flowers in front of the Google China office in Beijing Wednesday. Photo: AFP

Chinese officials are set to meet with their US counterparts over a diplomatic row ignited by Google's threat last week to withdraw from China.

More meetings are coming over Internet freedom, Assistant US Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said Tuesday, adding that Washington views free and open Internet use as a "universal right that should be available to all people."

On the same day, an American computer security researcher, found "strong evidence" of the digital fingerprints of Chinese authors in the software programs used in attacks against Google, The New York Times reported.

By analyzing the software used in the break-ins against Google and dozens of other companies, Joe Stewart, a malware specialist with SecureWorks, a computer security company based in Atlanta, said he determined that the main program used in the attack contained a module based on an unusual algorithm from a Chinese technical paper that has been published exclusively on Chinese-language websites.

"Hacking, in whatever form, is prohibited by law in China," China foreign ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu emphasized in a regular press conference, in the wake of Google's announcement January 12 that it had experienced a series of Internet break-ins of Chinese origin.

According to an article published January 8 by The Huffington Post, Facebook, Twitter and Youtube are considered "tools for diplomacy."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently hosted a dinner at the State Department, in which guests included Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey and Cisco CMO Susan Bostron, the report said, adding that they brainstormed and came up with ideas such as "finding creative ways to ensure that Internet access is always freely available."

"Harnessing the power of technology tools to promote diplomacy around the globe" is part of Clinton's 21st-century statecraft strategy, it added.

"Google is not satisfied with its market share in China, which lags far behind its global penetration," He Maochun, director at the Research Center of Economy and Diplomacy at Tsinghua University, told the Global Times, adding that the search engine gets around a 30 percent market share in China while it gets more than 90 percent in other countries."

"Google needs to adapt itself to the local environment and compete with its competitors," He added.

Agencies contributed to this story