China clarifies Internet companies in region would have to obey laws

Google and Yahoo! have been criticized a lot in the world media for bowing down to non-democratic Chinese laws to stay in business in the country.

Google had to change their policies and even censors their results on the Chinese version of their search engine to meet the Chinese government’s requirement.

Yahoo! has been accused of providing private information to the law authorities in the country to help them catch journalists writing about democracy and disallowed stuff on the internet.

Google just recently said that they are considering on whether to reverse their policy to censor their results on the Google China search engine but they might face hurdles.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has said that they welcome foreign companies to come and work in China but they must respect and abide by the country’s laws, including those on expression.

This means that Google might be totally banned/blocked in the region if they change their censoring policies meant to please the local government. Considering china is now the second largest internet market, it would be hard for them to leave this market.