Hermit: Google subverts Reform Policies

Hello Children,

Hermit the Taoist Dragonfly explains Google's threats against China

we are living in fateful times, and when the motherland is in mortal danger, you must sometimes interrupt your carefree games and heed your instructors’ warnings instead.

Maybe during the past weeks, you have noticed that your parents have become agitated about so-called Google, a  certain foreign-invested search engine. If your parents are among those misguided compatriots who harbor illusions about the hegemonists, you should listen to Uncle Hermit very closely now.

First of all, Google is a very dangerous company that wants to expose the lilywhite souls of our compatriots to online porn. If your parents don’t like our Party’s correct administration of the Chinese internet, it only shows that their once pure souls have already become grey or black.

But most importantly, Google is trying to corrupt the goals of our policies of reform and opening. The goal of Comrade Xiaoping‘s reforms has always been to make use of foreigners and to stoically tolerate the flies that come through the open windows, so long as we need some  bad people here. But in the Google case, it seems that the cooperation between Chinese and foreign investors was actually intricate!

Listen very closely now, children. The purpose of our participation in international business is not to make friends with foreigners! It is to use them, as Comrade Nanny correctly stated before. If those of our compatriots who built a Chinese joint venture with Google thought that a joint venture with foreigners is about win-win, i. e. including win for foreigners, they have profoundly misunderstood the concept of permitting foreign investment in China.

We must think of the Google puppets’ bad example as a stern warning to all of us. We are sometimes too good and honest, and naive. Like Comrade Xiaoping once said in an earlier situation when our country was facing mortal danger from abroad, too, we must pass the test, and we must never forget how cruel our enemies are! Uncle Hermit himself almost died at the hands of the imperialists when he was a child!

If you believe that your parents have become the puppets of foreigners, just send Uncle Hermit a confidential email, and everything is going to be alright again, soon. Don’t worry, children.

Got to fly now. Stay patriotic and vigilant, children.

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Related
CYD: Google’s “‘Puppets'”, April 2, 2010

China Youth Daily: Google’s “‘Puppets'”

“Why are Google’s Chinese investment partners remaining silent,” asks China Youth Daily (中国青年报)^*), quoting Naive Northern Chinese in North America (北方憨哥在北美), reportedly a blogger who felt depressed because ever since the row began, he hadn’t heard the voice of the Chinese side in the joint venture running Google China, and who wonders if the Chinese investing company is belonging to the puppets of the foreign investors (是不是“属于外资方的‘傀儡’). China Youth Daily first goes back to the year 2006, when Google entered China, and an ICP controversy that apparently was in the news at the time.

According to China Youth Daily, the company that runs Google China is a joint venture, Beijing Gu Xiang Information Technology Co., Ltd. (北京谷翔信息技术有限公司), whose investors in turn are Feixiangren Information Technology Co., Ltd. (飞翔人信息技术有限公司)  from Beijing, and Google Ireland Holdings Ltd. – and not Google Information Technology (China) Co., Ltd., as the article emphasizes. The Guxiang joint venture obtained its ICP number in June 2007, the paper writes, and quotes two people familiar with the internet, Wang Junxiu (王俊秀) and Liu Xingliang (刘兴亮) as saying that Gu Xiang Information Technology had been just a shell to obtain an ICP number.

When starting its operations, Google had used Feixiang Co.’s ICP number, one that Feixiang itself had obtained in 2005, writes China Youth Daily, and adds that two friends of Feixiang Co.’s co-founder Yang Haoyong (杨浩涌) had been both Google employees, and fundraisers for the project that lead to the establishment of Feixiangren Information Technology Co., Ltd., the Chinese investor in the Guxiang joint venture.

Wikipedia writes that [o]perating from China is also a prerequisite for acquiring a license. Foreign companies such as Google, unable to acquire a ICP license on their own, often partner up with Chinese Internet companies to use the licenses of the Chinese company.

Wikipedia links to Forbes with a background story: Industry experts agree that Google’s actions are generally in line with those of other foreign multinationals here, lending more credence to the theory that Google may be receiving undue scrutiny due to a host of politically motivated reasons.

The China Youth Daily article’s second issue is the intricate relationship between the Chinese investors and Google.

In an interview in 2007, Yang Haoyong disclosed that the relation between the two sides were close:

“We began contacting Google at the end of 2005. By 2006, there was some strategic cooperation, which is now getting ever deeper. ….. We are depending on Google’s help and support.”

“从2005年年底我们就开始跟Google接触，到2006年有些战略合作，现在越来越深入……我们依赖Google给我们带来的帮助和支持.”

According to China Youth Daily, Feixiang’s current legal represenative was previously Google’s mobile products manager in China.

Yang Haoyong ended his tenure at the Guxiang joint venture’s helm on July 31, 2009.

The way the Guxiang joint venture was founded and the intricate relationship between Feixiang and Google had led Naive Northern Chinese in North America, the blogger referred to above, to his individual judgment that

the original Chinese joint venture was just like that, the Chinese investors’ side was basically belonging to the foreign investors’ sides’ “puppets”. No wonder that we don’t hear their voice!

原来中国的合资企业，就是这样来的，中资方基本上就属于外资方的‘傀儡’，怪不得听不到中资方的声音呢 !

The article ends with the statement that Feixiang Co. hadn’t been available for an interview.

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^*) China Youth Daily’s article is republished online today by Enorth, see this post’s first link

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Related
google.cn operating with no licence, China Blog, Febr 23, 2006
Provisions on Administration of Foreign-Invested Telecommunications Enterprises, china.org.cn, Jan 1, 2002