China Censorship

One of the most famous examples of Internet censorship is the procedure developed (f.e. iPhone Development) in China People’s Republic, sometimes called Great Firewall of China. In fact, now in the country there is a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations which direct the Internet censorship. More than 60 regulations have been adopted by the Chinese government itself and are nowadays applied by local administrations, business enterprises and organizations.
The escalation of the governmental censorship was caused by the necessity to neutralize critical online opinion after a series of large anti-Japanese, anti-pollution, and anti-corruption protests. For example, some critical remarks or comments are erased from the most popular portals such as Sohu and Sina within minutes.
Even the mighty Google had to compile with state laws in order to get the license as an Internet content provider in China. But recently there has been some tension in the relations as since January the search engine automatically forwarded Web surfers to an uncensored search engine in Hong Kong. According to their basic laws Hong Kong and Macau are special entities recognized by the international treaty vested with independent judicial power and not subject to most laws of the PRC, including those on the restricted flow of information.
The Chinese government accused the company on violating the earlier agreement but last week the  parties seemed  to find some sort of common ground to allow both sides to claim a partial victory.
In fact, the current agreement just proved the actual state of things. Google obtained its  license, which, in fact, can be revoked by the Chinese government any minute. The search engine can keep its Google.cn Web site and operate some Internet services in the mainland while referring Chinese users to its uncensored Hong Kong-based Chinese language search engine, at google.com.hk. Users from Hong Kong can in fact, conduct a Google search and see its  results, but they are rarely allowed to enjoy them as the latters can be easily blocked by  the Chinese government.
So, Google claims victory but, what’s even stranger, the Chinese government is doing the same thing. From its point of view, it can boast of its success as  it has made Google  move its search service out of mainland China and barred it from automatically redirecting users to its uncensored Hong Kong search services. At the same time it showed the whole world that they are civilized and open to the dialogue and communication, willing to balance economic issues and censorship.