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8/13/2019 Google Outage Shows Business Risks in China
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Google Outage Shows Business Risks inChinaByCARLOS TEJADAAndPAUL MOZUR
BEIJINGDisruptions toGoogleInc.'s Web-search and email services in China over
the weekend underscore the uncertainty surrounding Beijing's effort to control the
flow of information into the country, as well as the risks that effort poses to the
government's efforts to draw global businesses.
Google saw widespread disruptions to its Web services in China on Friday, according to the company's"transparency report" website. Amir Efrati has details on The News Hub. Photo: AFP/Getty Images.
Chinese users of many of Google's services reported a lack of access late Friday,
halting use of everything from Google's search engine to its Gmail email service to its
Google Play mobile-applications store. The Mountain View, Calif., company said that
its own statistics showed a sharp decline in traffic from China, and it said that theproblem didn't appear to be within its equipment.
Services returned on Saturday, though users in some parts of the country said use
was unpredictable and unreliable over the weekend.
Google's offices in Beijing. Chinese users faced a lack of access late Friday to services such as email and Web
searches.
The source of the disruptions couldn't be determined. China's Ministry of Industry
and Information Technology, an agency that oversees China's Internet industry,didn't respond to list of questions sent on Sunday.
Internet experts pointed to China's Internet censorship efforts, which have been
ratcheted up ahead of the 18th Party Congress, a meeting of top Communist Party
leaders in Beijing that began on Thursday. The meeting is expected to end this
coming Thursday with the unveiling of a new slate of top party leaders, making it a
sensitive time in the eyes of Beijing.
"There appears to be a throttling under way of Web access," said David Wolf, founder
of consulting firm Wolf Group Asia. Citing recent articles in foreign media about
corruption and wealth in China spurred by the party congress and the fall of former
party star Bo Xilai, he said, "that's their primary concern, people getting news either
through Google or through its services."
Chinese authorities often tighten Internet control around sensitive subjects and
events. But a number of users in recent weeks say Internet disruptions have
worsened to an unexpected degree ahead of the congress. In a recent interview,
Matthew Prince, chief executive of CloudFlare Inc., a company that provides Web-
performance and security services for websites, said the company's engineers and
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consumers have reported increased difficulties with traffic out of China since the end
of August.
The websites of the New York Times and Bloomberg News became unavailable in
China this year just as each ran articles describing the wealth accumulated by China's
leaders. Attorneys for the family of Wen Jiabao, China's premier, denied the Times's
report that his family had amassed a $2.7 billion fortune over two decades, and a
Foreign Ministry spokesman has said the report "blackens China and has ulterior
motives." The family of Xi Jinping, China's vice president and the widely expected
successor to Hu Jintao as China's president and head of the Communist Party, hasn't
commented publicly on the Bloomberg article, which detailed wealth accumulated by
Mr. Xi's family. Neither article accused the leaders of wrongdoing.
Sophisticated Chinese users can use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to circumvent
the system of Internet blockages that is sometimes called the Great Firewall. Butsome VPN operators, such as the Witopia service, in recent weeks also have said they
have been blocked.
Google's services are still widely available in China despite its declaration in 2010
that it wouldn't censor its search results in China anymore and would shift searches
to Hong Kong, a Chinese city that isn't subject to Beijing's censorship restrictions.
But the services can be unreliable and sometimes don't function right away, troubles
that experts attribute to Beijing's censorship efforts. Google is now only a minor
player in terms of market share in China's search business, which is dominated
byBaiduInc.
Beijing risks a backlash if it were to block Google outright on a long-term basis, said
Mr. Wolf, of Wolf Group Asia. Many corporate users rely on Gmail and other Google
services, and a blockage could make China a less-attractive place to do business. In
addition, disruptions are increasingly unappealing to businesses that rely on cloud
services, which are offered by Google and others and in which data are stored
remotely.
"If China insists in the medium and long term of creating another Great Firewall
between the China cloud and the rest of the world, China will be an increasinglyuntenable place to do business," Mr. Wolf said.
Such a move also could put Beijing in violation of its free-trade commitment under
the World Trade Organization, which China joined in 2001. China has said it
complies with WTO requirements.
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