NYTimes旧文：Google 的中国问题

Google 的中国问题

ecocity @ 2010-1-16 6:44 阅读(1928) 评论(2) 推荐值(44) 引用通告 分类: 未归类
2006年纽约时报的长文，译者不详。英文原文有一些小错误，译文中予以了保留。

Google's China Problem (and China's Google Problem)

By CLIVE THOMPSON


“Google”在中国：他不是Google

在中国，很多年轻人都把李开复当作名人。虽然不是像陈冠希或者演唱组合F4那样，但是这个44岁，总是身着一身灰色的计算机专家肯定能吸引一大堆粉丝。当这个Google中国公司的总裁在中国的大学发表演说，讲中国的年轻人如何该和世界上其他地方的青年竞争的时候，黄牛党会把门票炒到60美元一张。还有一次，李开复演讲的会场里有8000名听众，学生们被李开复的每一句话所吸引。

不难看出为什么李开复被崇尚科技的中国年轻一代视为偶像。他在台湾长大，之后去了美国，中英文都很熟练。在去年加入Google以前，他曾在加州为苹果公司工作，之后又效力于微软中国。他一手建立了位于北京的微软亚洲研究中心。他个人曾出版了"Be Your Personal Best,"一本卖得很好的励志类书籍，内容是关于中国学生需要接受有承担风险的精神的美国资本主义制度。七年前，他建立微软实验室的时候，就聘用了十几个中国顶尖的毕业生。现在他又在Google重复这样的步骤，“中国的学生绝对不同凡响。”他在北京和我见面的时候这样说。“他们有巨大的学习的欲望。”

在讲述科技带来的巨大解放的时候，李就像是一个传教士。他说，网络会给中国广大农村地区的人们带来更平等的机会。一旦国内的小乡村也实现了网络化，距离北京或者上海几千里之外的学生也能够学习麻省理工或者哈佛的网络课程，从而解决受教育的问题。李在去年夏天才加入Google，但是他身上早已经带着Google员工的那种热诚和理想化的信念。当他从微软离职的时候，他在个人网页上发表了一封感情洋溢的公开信，赞扬Google将信息传播给大众的这种使命感。他用了一个公式作为结论：年轻+自由+平等+ 颠覆+创新+用户为本+不要做坏事=Google的奇迹。

当我拜访李开复的时候，Google的奇迹正在北京的商业区的办公室里被进行着。这些小办公室看起来就像是在匆忙中租下来的。狭小的房间里挤满了穿着T-SHIRT的年轻人，围着巨大的纯平显示器，讨论Google的新程序代码。“我们这些人所抱的理想都是非常高尚而重要的，“李告诉我，“如何做出用户喜欢的东西，然后考虑下一步如何盈利。还有就是不要做坏事。”李开复指的是Google公司的格言。“不要做坏事---我想我在内心深处始终是一个理想主义者。”

但是Google最近几个月在中国的行动看起来却不怎么理想主义。在一月份，也就是李开复开办北京办事处不久，公司宣布将在中国市场推出新版本的搜索引擎。为了遵守中国的法律，Google同意净化所有中国政府不赞成的搜索结果。这其中包括法X功；宣扬言论自由的网站；或者任何提及天X门XX的网站。如果你搜索“西藏”或者“法XX”，中国以外的google能给出几千个博客，新闻，还有讨论组。但是在中文Google上试试，绝大多数的链接都不见了。Google把他们删得一干二净。

Google的决定在美国反响极差。一月份，公司主管被召到国会听证会，他们的行为被拿来和纳粹合作者相比。公司的股票下跌，抗议者举着标语在公司总部外抗议。Google虽然并非唯一一家在最近由于中国问题而受谴责的美国科技公司，而且也不是做的最过分的。然而Google的管理者却应该另当别论。当公司在两年前上市的时候，公司年轻的创始人，Sergey Brin和 Larry Page 在写给证券所的文件中说，Google是一个值得信任的，关注公众利益的公司。Google现在却和压制自由的中国政权合作，他如何自圆其说？

我很难准确的了解李开复对于公司和中国政府的合作持怎样的态度。作为我和李开复会面的条件，Google不允许我提起有关此类的问题，只有公司在加州的总部才被允许谈论此话题。但是当我和李谈起网络是如何改变中国的时候，他的一个观点颇能说明问题：他所雇用的中国学生，其实并不渴望民主。“人们其实可以自由地谈论这个话题，他补充说，（指的是民主和人权问题）我不认为他们在乎这个。我认为大家会说：“美国民主，那是好东西。中国现在的繁荣和稳定，也是好东西。不管怎么样，我现在能去我喜欢的网站，能看到我的朋友，过得开开心心。”李开复说，当然，关于自我的表达，公开发表言论，已经变成了中国年轻人当中的热门话题，这是由于互联网的普及以及博客，论坛已经遍布中国。“但是我不认为这有什么政治含义，”李接着说，“我认为只是越来越多的人发现他们可以表达自己，并且被别人听到。他们喜欢这个,这样就够了。”

这样的话在我听来，就像是含糊的政治见解—一种缩了水的言论自由的概念。但是当我和中国的年轻一代网民相处一段时间以后，我听到的都是略有不同的类似观点。年轻+自由+平等+不要做坏事 这是一个等式，包含着几个恒量，却有着许多个可能的解答。当下，对于中国人来说，何谓自由？审查制度也有层次之分？限制信息也有好坏之分？在美国，这样的问题根本就无法被接受---对话到这里就该结束了。但是在中国，正如Google所发现的那样，对话才刚刚开始。

文化差异

事实上，Google在中国并不是先驱。雅虎是第一家进入中国市场的美国网络公司，在1999年就推出了中文网站，并在北京建立了办事机构。雅虎的决策层很快就认识到进入中国是多么困难—而且文化的障碍对于美国人来说是何等的巨大。例如，中国的生意人在沟通的时候不喜欢留言，留信息这样的方式，他们倾向于使用手机和短信。（我在联系一个中国总裁的时候就遇到对方电话关机，而且不能使用留言的情况）对于中国网民而言，网络最吸引人之处---这一点和美国不太一样—就是论坛。成千上万的关于不同问题的争论在论坛上出现。百度，一个2001年推出的中国搜索引擎，雅虎的早期竞争者之一，发明了一个讨论工具。允许人们对当前的热点搜索项目进行即时讨论。用户现在如果在百度搜索nba巨星姚明的话，他们找到的不只是关于他比赛的报道，他们还能加入和姚明有关的成千上万个聊天室。百度的聊天室每天会有超过5百万的发帖。

正如雅虎所发现的那样，这些文化上的细微差别导致了美国公司的网站对于中国用户而言太外国化了。也使得这些用户转投那些中国网站。这其中包括了新浪和搜狐。这两家网站的搜索引擎不那么好用，但是充斥着论坛聊天室还有政府批准的中文网站。高涨的民族情绪可能也有关系。“现在大家都有一种强烈自豪感，要支持自己人。”香港城市大学的LIH告诉我。

雅虎在另外一股席卷中国的浪潮里也走得太慢了：盗版的浪潮。自从Napster事件以后，西方国家普遍都把上网免费下载音乐和电影看作违法行为。当然在西方这种现象还是很猖獗，但是自从iTune的成功以后，更多的人愿意付费。在中国，下载盗版音乐，电影和软件就和上网查看天气预报一样平常。百度的总裁发现很多年轻人都在网上找盗版mp3，所以公司就专为此目的开发了一个界面。一天下午，当我在北京的一家网吧里的时候，隔着几张椅子的一个年轻人正在吸着可乐，看着下载的《最后的武士》，他的朋友则在使用百度来下载50cents乐队的新专辑。“差不多五分之一的百度流量来自mp3的搜索，这个在美国肯定不合法。”robin李，37岁的公司创始人说到，“现在我觉得唱片公司可能对我们提供的服务不太高兴。”他最近这样告诉我，“但我认为数字音乐是一种趋势，无法阻挡。”

一开始，Google在进入中国市场上的策略和雅虎就不同。2000年早些时候，Google的工程师悄悄地开始研发能够接收中文，日文，韩文的系统。到了年底，一个勉强能用的中文版google就诞生了。2001年的时候如果你在中国上网，Google的服务器就会检测到你的位置并自动连接到中文的界面。法文版的Google系统也是这样运作的。

就在百度吸引大批喜欢下载mp3的年轻人的时候，Google却在另一些人那里受到欢迎：中国大城市里面的白领，那些接受西方文化，说话夹杂着英文单词的，一个认同全球视野多于民族情绪的阶层。

靠着吸引这些人，Google在2002年底成功超越了雅虎，占领了中国搜索引擎流量的四分之一---这样的成绩完全是在加州的公司完成的，远离中国政府的影响。

防火墙构成的万里长城

接着在2002年9月3日，Google消失了。中国人在那天发现网站被封锁了，只剩下一个错误信息。中国政府开始封锁Google。中国在网络审查上主要依靠两个手段。对于境内的公司，政府使用一系列惩罚和恐吓手段来保证内容的干净。对于境外的网站，政府使用另一种卓有成效的控制方法：被称作网络上的中国万里长城。

当你在使用网络的时候，你感觉似乎是无形无界的。实际上却不是。通过光缆传输的信息需要经过真实的国境线。中国一共有三条光缆主线，中国的网络就以此来和世界连接。中国政府要求管理这些网络的公司设置路由端口，在国内外网络的交接处。其中一些设施是由sisco思科公司提供的，一家美国公司，作为中国的新审查员。

如果你用北京的一台电脑进入一个服务器在芝加哥的网站，你的浏览器就会发出一个请求，这个请求就会通过光缆传到审查的路由那里，然后被检查。如果请求的网站在中国政府的黑名单上—长长的名单—而且还在增多—请求被拒绝。如果请求没有被拒绝，路由接着就会检查所请求的网站上有没有敏感词汇。如果网站包含一个类似“法X”或者1989XXX之类的，路由就会阻断信号，回到网吧，你就会看到浏览器给出一个错误提示。这个过滤系统的复杂程度让人惊讶，可以让某个网站的一些网页通过，同时封锁一些页面。当我在北京的网吧上网，我可以浏览BBC的娱乐和体育页面，新闻页面就打不开。

Google给审查者们带来了特殊的问题：由于当时Google在中国并没有办事机构，中国政府无权干涉，也没有能力让Google主动清除搜索结果。这样，网络长城的功效就只有一半了：它能够屏蔽Google的搜索结果所指向的网站，但是却没法阻止人们看到被禁网站的列表。例如你在上海，然后搜索人 权，你可以搜索到包括中国人 权组织在内的被中国政府屏蔽的网站。但是当你试图点击链接试图进入的时候，你就又会得到一个报告错误的提示信息。政府官员不喜欢这种状况--中国人由此能感觉到，他们的领导人对什么话题感到了威胁—但是Google很受欢迎，他们也不敢完全屏蔽。

在2002年，状况发生了改变。中国政府决定全面屏蔽Google。为什么？各种理论充斥着。Google的创始人sergey告诉我，他怀疑是某个竞争对手从中挑拨—某个中国的竞争对手。但他很老练地没有给出任何一个名字。但是很多美国的网络总裁都相信百度在Google被封的事件中直接受益。一个在北京的合资企业家告诉我，屏蔽Google的幕后挑拨者就是百度，2002年，百度的市场占有率比Google低3个百分点。“百度的一些人就坐下来找了上百个能让Google被封的证据。”她说，（她坚持要求匿名，以免遭到官方的报复）“接着百度的人就拿着这些结果找到政府，说，看这些有危害的东西都是在Google找到的，这就是Google被封的原因。“百度坚决否认指责。当我和北京社科院的一位教授谈起的时候，他也否定对于百度的指责，争辩说百度本来就要比Google强，而且更了解中国人的需要。然而，许多了解内情的人都告诉我，中国本土的网络公司经常向政府反映竞争对手的网站内容，以此希望对手遭到打压。在中国，审查制度不只是一个政治工具，而且还是一个竞争工具—一根公司之间互相捶打对方的大棍。

自我审查有奖

10月份的一个晚上，当我去到一家网吧的时候，那里120多个机位已经被年轻人们占满了。（因为电脑和家庭网络还是很昂贵，所以很多年轻人都是去网吧上网，享受低廉的价格和高速的带宽—还有冷饮）每个人看起来都准备好好地享受一整个晚上：年轻的女孩穿这粉红色和黄色的hello kitty的运动衫，在几个聊天窗口之间切换。楼上一帮穿着橄榄色军装的年轻中国士兵，欢笑着徜徉在中世纪幻想的魔兽世界里。在一堵墙边，挨着一副褪色的功夫电影海报，贴着一行字：请勿浏览色情及违法网页。这个告示几乎没有任何作用；这里的每个人看起来根本不会去浏览关于天X门事件的网站。我询问了网吧的老板，他的顾客会不会经常浏览非法的内容。不经常，他笑着回答，就算有，也是黄色网站。他觉得封锁非法信息应该是政府的事。“政府不准看，那就是不该看。”

对于中国，西方人经常会犯的一个错误就是假设，政府进行审查是偷偷摸摸的。恰恰相反，党对于这个问题非常的诚实---甚至是骄傲。一个不愿意透露姓名的美国商人告诉了我一件事，关于他参加一个中国网络公司协会的颁奖礼，其中出席的包括主要的网络服务提供商。“我当时坐在听众席，然后他们就说，现在宣布年度自律奖！然后宣布了10个公司，给他们发了奖牌，然后握手。一位部长也在那里，还和每个人都拍了照。这基本上就像是自我审查优秀奖—然后每个观众都在鼓掌。”这位商人解释说，中国的网络审查，是警察的一项额外任务。一月份，深圳公共安全部门推出了两个可爱的卡通形象“网络警察”，被命名为JINGJING和CHACHA，每个网络警察都有博客和聊天窗口，市民可以和他们聊天。北京青年报引用深圳官员的话“这两个形象的主要作用是震慑。”文章接着解释说这两个形象主要是公开提醒所有网民，注意安全和健康地使用网络，自我规范网上行为，创造和谐网络环境。

震慑和“自我规范”，事实上在党使用审查制度控制私营网络公司方面很关键。要获准经营网络业务，私人公司必须签订一份协议，不允许包含某些特定话题的内容出现，包括“扰乱公共秩序或破坏稳定团结”，“损害国家荣誉和利益”，或者“违反国内风俗和习惯”。有一项禁令特别针对邪教或者其他迷信，这是很清晰地指向法XX的。但是整个协议的表述，有意地搞得很含糊。随便哪一级哪个部的官员都可以要求把他认为过分的内容清除掉。

国家信息产业部的官员每周都会召集各大网络服务公司的管理者开例会---特别是拥有新闻，博客和论坛的那些---讨论那些新的话题可能在本周出现，而且最好被清理掉。“私底下我们都叫他吹风会。--换句话说，就是会吹哪个方向的风。”那个美国商人说到。政府官员会在几天前就发出警告。

美国的网络公司在刚来中国的时候，都希望政府能够提供一份官方的黑名单，以及需要审查的敏感词。他们很快发现这样的清单根本不存在。取而代之，政府只是要求公司模糊地去进行自我规范。所以公司必须要参透中国的政治，从而自己了解什么东西政府会不喜欢。去年网上曾经流传着一个清单，据传是政府给博客公司的黑名单。事实上，这份黑名单是中国一家博客公司的一位年轻总裁自己整理的。每一次政府要求清理一个帖子，他就留意哪些内容是政府针对的。过了一段时间，他就开发出了自己的黑名单，让自己的公司以后免遭斥责。

不服从自我审查规范的后果很严重。一位美国的公共关系顾问最近在帮一家中国门户网站工作时见到，一天下午，警察冲进公司办公室，把CEO拖进了会议室然后严厉斥责他没能阻止违法内容。“事后他脸都吓白了。”这名顾问回忆说，“你必须理解，这些人都被吓坏了，真的吓坏了。他们很害怕被抓去坐牢。每天坐在办公室里，他们都在想着这种事。”

这样的结果就是，中国的网站总是会审查清除掉甚至比需要的还多的内容。中国这一整套体系是建立在一个经典的心理学事实上的：自我的审查永远要比官方的审查更全面更彻底。让每一件网络公司都各扫门前雪，政府就有效地控制了用其他方法难以监控的数十亿电子邮件，新闻，论坛话题。政府采用的方法看起来就像是让公司去自己揣测，然后时不时，怒气冲冲地要求网站在24小时内清理某些内容。James，一位美国的中国问题专家说：“他们的执法总是充满着随意性，让人觉得他们就是在监控所有事情。

政府的监控虽然很全面，但也有不灵的时候。某一天可能某个被禁的站点又突然看得到了，多数是由于路由器超出负载，或者政府突然决定容忍这个网站。第二天，或许这个网站就又消失了。总的来说，网民的举动都是很小心的。他们很少触及政府的戒条。在中国有许多不能够跨越的界限，大家不用经常谈论这个，但每个生活在其中，了解中国文化的人都或多或少的理解这些界限。这也正是美国公司对中国的环境感到困惑的原因。什么是被允许的？什么是被禁止的？

对比美国人经历的彷徨，当我问起中国的商人，政府的审查制度对于公司到底难不难操作。“我告诉你，绝对不会比在美国提交财政报表难。”XIN YE，sohu的创始人这样说。还有一个晚上，我和张朝阳，新浪的总裁在上海一家爵士酒吧喝酒的时候，我问其他，多长时间他需要把新浪论坛上的帖子清理一次。他回答：“不太经常。”我问他，不太经常指的是一星期，一个月还是更久。他提出了反对，我不认为我应该谈论这个。虽然这样，他却没有因为我问的问题而感到困扰，“我不想把这个叫做审查制度，这就像每个国家都会有一种倾向。在美国也有些宗教禁忌不能谈论，大家都知道这个。”

阿里巴巴网站的老板JACK MA说的更直接“我们不想让政府生气。”我是在十月份的一天，在北京中国国际宾馆的大堂见到他的。MA的公司刚刚被雅虎收购了40%的股权，MA全权负责雅虎在中国的经营。他对于网上言论的看法是：“任何在中国属于非法的东西，都不会出现在我们的搜索引擎上。我们只是做生意。股东要的是分红，股东希望我们的顾客能够高兴。同时，我们也没有义务要在政治方面做这个做那个。忘记这个吧！”

小小的革命

去年秋天，在北京星巴克，我遇到了中国最著名的政治博客写手，ZHAO JING。他是一个31岁，穿着讲究而又帅气的人。当他说起90年代晚期网络的到来让中国发生了巨变的时候，言语中透出喜悦。政府之前控制了所有的媒体，但是中国的老百姓可以上论坛或者建立自己的博客了，这就像是解开了一把锁。就算你再谨慎，不愿谈论政治。你也可以只是公开的发表你对其他事情的见解---天气，体育---感觉上真是一场小小的革命。ZHAO（他现在就职于纽约时报北京分社）在言论方面要比大多数人都大胆，越界。大学毕业后，ZHAO在一座小城市的旅馆里做了接待员。他觉得如果自己够幸运，有一天也会有自己的事业。1998年他开始上网，开始意识到他真正想做的事情其实是谈论政治问题。他开始撰文发帖。在网上写了一段时间以后，一家报社的编辑就请他去做记者了。

“这就使网络的作用。”ZHAO说着，并露出一丝微笑，“我只上网了一个星期，就在省内外都出了名。我之前从来没想过自己能写东西。但我也意识到问题不在我，而是我居住的这座小城市。”ZHAO在2003年3月丢了工作，由于他所在的报纸发表了关于一位支持政治改革的退休官员的文章，政府报复性地查封了报纸。但是ZHAO仍然渴望写作，因此就在一个服务器在英国的博客网上安了家。他以安替作为笔名，写了很多诙谐的支持言论自由的文章。这些文章很快就吸引了成千上万的读者。八月下旬，政府使用防火墙封掉了他的网站，这样在中国就没人能看到了。他转而使用微软的博客，MSN SPACE。虽然政府还在监控他的文字，但安替却仍然大胆地在写。安替告诉我，他知道自己很安全，因为他知道哪些界限不能碰。

“如果你只是每天上网写东西，批评政府，他们不会介意，”他说，“因为这只是言论。但如果你想组织一些人—哪怕只有三四个---那他们就要来收拾你了。因为这不是言论，而是有组织有预谋。人们说我很勇敢，但其实我不是。”网络给安替带来了一定的政治影响力，但他说起自己的博客对政府能产生什么影响时，却不怎么兴奋。更让他兴奋一点的，是他对自己的认识不断发生变化。还有几个中国的年轻人也是这样告诉我的。如果网络能给中国带来一场革命，那么革命也肯定是通过每个人的自我实现，通过许许多多微小的，平凡的方式。

一天下午，我去拜访了一位29岁的中国女士，JIANG JINGYI。她在EBAY开了一个网上服装店。当她打开自己在上海的繁华地区的公寓大门的时候，我感觉自己突然撞进了一间别致的SOHO流行时装店。三排衣架挂满了冬天穿的夹克，起居室的中间堆着运动衫，还有整齐地摆放着的跑鞋和靴子。我们坐在她摆了四台电脑的卧室里喝茶，JIANG通过翻译告诉我，她以前是一个设计师。但她自己很喜欢开店。所以有一天就决定在当地的服装厂进一些便宜的衣服，然后放在网上卖。衣服卖得很快，她得了3成的利润。接下来的三个月，她越卖越多。有一天她发现网上拍卖的利润已经超过了她原来工作的工资。她辞了工，开始专心搞拍卖。现在她每月的销售额超过100，000元，合12000美元。

“我的父母没法理解。”她笑着说，一边用电脑向我展示她最新的拍卖，一件售价300元的夹克（网上她给这件夹克的描述是“非常时髦，穿起来很酷！” ）现在JIANG的销售范围已经遍布全国各大城市。以前中国落后的银行系统和信用机制让网络交易很复杂。但现在贝宝---EBAY的网络交易系统—终于把中国和世界市场连了起来。她说自己准备开展小型的国际业务，把打折的衣服直接卖到伦敦或者洛杉矶。

妥协与放弃

Google到现在也没搞清楚，到底是什么原因让中国政府在2002年下了查封令。而查封令在两周之后又神秘地嘎然而止。但是就算解除了查封，Google还是有很多麻烦。中国的防火墙长城拖慢了所有进入这个国家的网络信号。一百次里面有十五次，Google会因为网络塞车而无法使用。防火墙也开始惩罚那些好奇的人们：如果有人查找一个敏感词汇，防火墙通常就回复一个虚假的错误信息，让人以为Google的系统坏掉了。然后接下去的好几分钟，用户就没法再连接上Google----这种惩罚可以算是数字化的一巴掌吧。对于Google来说，这些延迟和错误是个很大的问题，因为搜索引擎本因在毫秒之间给出结果。百度，Google的主要中文竞争对手，就没有这样的问题，因为他们的服务器就在中国本土，在万里长城之内。更糟的是中国的大学网络不能够访问国外网站，意味着Google在其他国家最忠实的粉丝，在中国却不得不选择百度。

BRIN和其他Google的总裁们意识到，防火墙留给他们的只有两个选择，而且都是他们不情愿的。如果Google继续置之不理，继续只在国外运行，那么结果只能是被防火墙拖慢，甚至更不公平的封锁---最终，市场份额就会被百度和其他中文搜索引擎瓜分。如果他们开办中国分部，把服务器开在中国，防火墙的问题就不存在了，服务速度立刻就能提升。但是Google就必须屈从于中国的审查制度。

大棒加胡萝卜最终把Google引到了中国。百度就是大棒：截至2005年，百度已经彻底地击败了竞争对手，几乎抢占了一半的中国搜索引擎市场，而Google的市场份额缩水到了27%。胡萝不就是Google公司自己的一个概念，让一个独裁的国家的人民拥有更多的信息来源，这就是在做好事。公司的职员指出，他们肯定要比那些屈从于审查制度的中国公司做得好。当然，Google也必须清楚最敏感的政治网站----宗教团体，民主组织，天XX纪念---还有黄色网站。但是相比中国用户能够在Google上找到的内容，这些只是九牛一毛。Google还是能让中国人更多地了解艾滋病，环境问题，禽流感，全球市场。BRIN告诉我，利润，在综合考虑的因素中占的比重不大。他认为Google要想在中国盈利至少需要好几年。他认为，事实上进入中国市场的商业考虑并没有希望中国人能够好地获取信息的考虑多。“我们最终决定作出这个妥协。”

他和起来管理层开始讨论哪些妥协他们能够接受。最后决定是，不像雅虎和微软，他们不提供中文的邮件和博客服务，因为这样的服务会被迫使得他们要审查博客或者要把不同政见者的信息提交给秘密警察。他们还决定不会撤销现有的，没有审查过的中文版Google。这样一来，他们实际上就给中国人提供了两个搜索引擎。中国网民仍然可以进入旧版google.com；这个版本提供没有审查过的搜索结果，虽然敏感的结果最后仍然会带来一个错误页面，虽然该版本仍然会很慢而且时不时地被防火墙整个封杀。新版的Google是google.cn,这一版的内容会经过审查---但是会快得多，可靠而且不会被防火墙阻挠。

BRIN和他的小组决定如果他们必须要清理例如“天XX事件”的搜索结果，那他们会在搜索结果的顶端放上一个声明，解释说根据中国法律，有些结果被隐去。当中国的用户查找被禁止的条目，BRIN说，“他们至少能注意到有东西没有了，或者至少注意到国家的控制。”这就使计算机专家经常使用的解决方案：信息缺失其实也是一种信息。（Google的法语和德语版也会显示类似信息，针对一些支持纳粹的网站）

BRIN的小组还要接受另一个挑战：如何决定哪些网站要屏蔽？中国政府不会给他们一个黑名单。所以Google的技术人员就借助高科技手段。他们在中国境内设置了一台计算机，然后设置程序让该机访问国外站点，一个接一个地试。如果有站点被屏蔽了，就意味着政府把它视为非法---这个网站就被加进Google的黑名单。

2005年12月，Google的管理层在许可证上签字，正是进入中国市场。他们从来没有正式地和政府官员坐下来，接受审查协议。他们决定自己先这么做---然后等着政府的反应。

中国风暴

Google.cn于今年一月27日正式运营，维护人权组织的成员马上登陆新的引擎，察看它是如何运作的。Google的自我清查非常全面，有关法XX的第一页搜索结果，都是反对法XX的网站。Google的图片搜索，也是很出类似的结果。输入天X门，你看不到XX和XX，只能看到夜晚的美景还有幸福的中国夫妇在那里的合影。

Google的时机实在选得太差了。Google.cn的做法被代入一个政治语境，和其他在华科技公司的做法相提并论。去年九月，无国界记者组织透露，在2004年，雅虎把一封用户的个人邮件交给中国政府。导致SHI TAO，一名商业记者，在把关于政府规范媒体的文件传给境外网站的时候被捕。他被判入狱10年。接着在12月，微软遵从政府的要求，关闭了安替的博客。值得注意的是，微软的博客服务器甚至没有在中国；公司有效地遵从了大洋彼岸政府的审查，删除了位于美国的服务器里的资料。

对比这些事件，Google的管理层也许表现得更负责更道德。但是中国问题的风暴在二月席卷了硅谷，Google首当其冲。国会召集了三家公司进行听证---一起的还有csico，中国万里长城的硬件提供商---立法会质疑了三家公司的做法，Google更是被特别地教训了一顿。他们质问，一家以“不要做坏事”为口号的公司为何与中国的审查者合作。“这样你们的公司就成了中国政府的打手，”JIM LEACH，爱荷华州的民主党人说，“如果国会也想学学怎么审查，我们就找你们Google。”

安替给出的排名

2月份，我又一次见到了安替，这时候距离他的博客被关闭已经两个月了。我们在北京的一间酒吧喝酒。安替还是像之前那样充满活力，虽然他有点后悔上次自己所做的乐观的评价。“我现在有一点愤世嫉俗。”他的博客被封是因为一篇日志，谈到中国一家报纸的主编被炒。他当时呼吁大家抵制该报。这个举动显然是越界了。已经不只是言论那么简单，因为安替号召了大家去行动。政府联系了微软，要求关闭安替博客，公司同意了。这个举动召来了大批拥护言论自由人士的抗议，他们指责微软甚至在中国政府还没给出正式的要求之前就屈从了。

微软似乎对公众的抗议已经习以为常。在国会听证的时候，公司的政府关系总管表达了遗憾。为了挽回颜面，微软高层指出他们备份了被删掉的博客日志，并把他们寄给了安替。安替告诉我，微软并没有提及，他们拒绝把日志通过电子邮件发给他，他们只是刻了一张碟，然后寄到安替要求的美国境内任何一个地址。微软看起来太害怕中国政府了，安替苦笑着说，他们甚至不敢通过邮件把被查禁的东西寄到中国。（微软拒绝对本文发表评论）

我原本以为安替会很愤怒。但他却出人意料地很平静。他把几家公司进行了道德上的排名，扳着手指一间间的数。他说，Google应该排在最前。它确实真诚地在改善中国人获取信息的质量，而且在这样坏的体系里希望做到最好。微软其次；安替显然对他们的做法不太高兴，但他说微软还是提供了一个好用的博客工具，毕竟给中国人提供了一个公开发表意见的空间。雅虎排在最后，安替对他们的态度唯有怨恨。

“Google做出了妥协。”他说到，有时候妥协是必要的。但是雅虎的行为，却要被归到另一类：“雅虎是叛徒，中国人都痛恨雅虎。”安替说，不同点是雅虎把一个不同政见者置于危险当中，而且很明显没有考虑到对人权的伤害。（雅虎没有做出评论）Google却相反，他们避免了那些有可能导致人们入狱的服务。安替说，他们虽然也在审查信息，但他们犯的错无非是删掉一些信息，而不是删掉自己的人性。

失真的世界

安替的道德观点很让人惊讶，不只是因为对于美国的思维方式来讲太过陌生。大多数美国人，特别是多数思考和写作关于中国问题的美国人，他们的思维中不存在折中的民主，或者折中的言论自由。一个国家要么就完全拥护这些自由，要么就是跌进了集权国家的深渊。但是中国的博客写手和网民们其实之前早已经在谷底待着了。从这个角度来看，被审查过的互联网，已经对中国社会产生了深远的影响。对于年轻一代来说，网络把公共言论变成了一种日常行为。这个角度也正是Google所接受的。由此引出一个有趣的问题：一个不完美的互联网能否带来一个更完美的社会？

有一位我采访过的总裁把中国的互联网问题总结为“失真的世界”的问题。如果那些用Google搜索法XX的人看到的都是反对的网站，他们的世界观会是怎样的？ 他们也许会相信Google的权威，假设情况就是这样。这正是最近国会听证会上，民主党代表CRISTOPHER SMITH所担心的。“关于敏感问题，当Google只是带给你正面宣传的信息，那么Google在其中就起了协从的作用。这样就影响了整个下一代---他们会认为，也许我们可以生存在独裁的环境里。没有什么LECH WALESAS（波兰革命的领袖人物），民主永远都不可能实现。”对于SMITH来说，Google的逻辑就是妥协的逻辑。就像很多公司和种族隔离的南非打交道一样，Google太看重利益，而忽略政治问题。（本月早些时候，Google的CEO在北京见李开复时对记者说，Google去改变中国的审查制度，实在是很“傲慢”）

但是也许失真的世界对中国来说还是小问题，因为很多中国人告诉我，他们很久以前就学会了跳过党的那些虚伪的政治宣传和媒体控制。中国社科院的GUO LIANG教授告诉我一个显著的例子。“哈佛的一些人做了一个关于中国互联网的调查，我们他们调查结果是什么？他们回答，我们认为中国政府试图控制互联网。我就一直笑，我说，我们当然知道这个！”Google的审查过滤对GUO来说并没有什么值得讨论的，一点也不新鲜。

香港城市大学的教授ANDREW LIH说，大多数中国人抱有一种长远的眼光看问题。“中国人有五千年的历史，你现在封一个网站，他们只会想，用不了多少时间，它自己就会回来的。”或者想想中国那些想方设法登陆维基百科全书的人。最近，伟基百科被全面封杀。这些人希望说服维基的管理者能够建立一个中国政府允许的版本，禁掉那些在中国不合法的条目。他们说，这对于中国来说其实是好事，特别是那些边远地区学校。（到目前为止，维基仍然表示不会创建一个审查过的版本）

电脑程序的代码是很灵活的，因此有很多办法对抗虚伪---让信息审查这个事实或多或少被大家看到。在开发google.cn的过程中，Google曾经考虑禁掉和敏感话题有关的所有内容。也就是说在Google中国去搜索法XX，结果是一个支持的站点也没有，一个反对的站点也没有。那样能带来怎样的影响呢？别忘了，当Google推出审查版的google.cn的时候，仍然保留了旧版的搜索引擎。也就是说任何一个网民，只要输入一个敏感词，然后把新旧版本的结果做一个对比，就可以知道黑名单上到底有什么了。有些批评家甚至建议Google做得更多一点，直接把黑名单在美国公布，让审查制度变得完全透明。

超级女生理论

当我和李开复在他北京的办公室谈话的时候，有些时候我会感到他的前后矛盾。有一阵他就像一个热爱自由的Google人，强调说互联网给了每个网民以权力。但是下一分钟，他就更像阿里巴巴的总裁JACK MA---强调中国人对于引发动荡不感兴趣。在和中国的网络公司总裁聊天的时候，我一次又一次的听到这样的圆圈逻辑：我们不觉得清理掉敏感话题有什么不好，因为用户本来就不会去看那些东西。

也许他们是对的，用户是不会去看。但你也能很轻易地反驳说，他们不感兴趣只是因为他们被吓到了。谁会公开地在公共网吧查找不合法内容呢？---甚至是在家里—政府要求每个上网用户都要登记姓名和电话号码以便追踪。政府对网络的镇压甚至有可能变本加厉，如果中国广大的穷苦农民也开始上网。政府适度的容忍受过教育的知识分子的网络言论。但是那些被腐败的地方官僚欺压的农民们都是激进分子，他们对北京来说是现实的威胁。2004年有多达70，000起抗议活动，其中很多都被强硬地镇压了。

在批评家眼中，Google是将中国网民的期望置之不顾，为了保证市场赢利而屈从于中国政府。李开复的话则代表一种完全不同的信念：互联网由于与生俱来的特性，将会逐渐瓦解政府控制言论的能力，为一个拥护民主的社会打下基础。从这个观点出发，中国的革命将不会存在“伟人”，也不会存在LECH WALESA式的英雄，激励被压迫的同胞，为民主而战的将是一亿毫不关心政治的年轻人，他们在博客上谈论他们的约会，他们喜欢的乐队，电子游戏---整整一代把公共言论当作日常习惯的年轻人。

在我们谈话当中，李开复谈起了去年的超级女生，一个模仿“美国偶像”的电视节目。和美国的版本类似，年轻漂亮的女孩在夺目耀人的包装之下演唱西方流行歌曲。每一回合，观众都可以通过短信选出他们最喜欢的参赛者。随着比赛进入白热化，开始了类似总统大选的拉票活动，组织起来的粉丝们建立网站，要求大家投自己喜爱的歌手。最后的决赛，有800万年轻人参与了投票；冠军是李宇春，21岁，学生打扮的她唱了爱尔兰乐队Cranberries的一首zombie。

“我觉得这就是民主的一次实践。”李开复说，“大家为超级女生投票。他们喜欢这个比赛---他们上街去拉票。”换句话说，也许这并不是革命。但是这也许是个开始。

（作者CLIVE THOMPSON是纽约时报杂志的记者，经常报道科技类问题）

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Google's China Problem (and China's Google Problem)

By CLIVE THOMPSON
Published: April 23, 2006

For many young people in China, Kai-Fu Lee is a celebrity. Not quite on the level of a movie star like Edison Chen or the singers in the boy band F4, but for a 44-year-old computer scientist who invariably appears in a somber dark suit, he can really draw a crowd. When Lee, the new head of operations for Google in China, gave a lecture at one Chinese university about how young Chinese should compete with the rest of the world, scalpers sold tickets for $60 apiece. At another, an audience of 8,000 showed up; students sprawled out on the ground, fixed on every word.

It is not hard to see why Lee has become a cult figure for China's high-tech youth. He grew up in Taiwan, went to Columbia and Carnegie-Mellon and is fluent in both English and Mandarin. Before joining Google last year, he worked for Apple in California and then for Microsoft in China; he set up Microsoft Research Asia, the company's research-and-development lab in Beijing. In person, Lee exudes the cheery optimism of a life coach; last year, he published "Be Your Personal Best," a fast-selling self-help book that urged Chinese students to adopt the risk-taking spirit of American capitalism. When he started the Microsoft lab seven years ago, he hired dozens of China's top graduates; he will now be doing the same thing for Google. "The students of China are remarkable," he told me when I met him in Beijing in February. "There is a huge desire to learn."

Lee can sound almost evangelical when he talks about the liberating power of technology. The Internet, he says, will level the playing field for China's enormous rural underclass; once the country's small villages are connected, he says, students thousands of miles from Shanghai or Beijing will be able to access online course materials from M.I.T. or Harvard and fully educate themselves. Lee has been with Google since only last summer, but he wears the company's earnest, utopian ethos on his sleeve: when he was hired away from Microsoft, he published a gushingly emotional open letter on his personal Web site, praising Google's mission to bring information to the masses. He concluded with an exuberant equation that translates as "youth + freedom + equality + bottom-up innovation + user focus + don't be evil = The Miracle of Google."

When I visited with Lee, that miracle was being conducted out of a collection of bland offices in downtown Beijing that looked as if they had been hastily rented and occupied. The small rooms were full of eager young Chinese men in hip sweatshirts clustered around enormous flat-panel monitors, debugging code for new Google projects. "The ideals that we uphold here are really just so important and noble," Lee told me. "How to build stuff that users like, and figure out how to make money later. And 'Don't Do Evil' " — he was referring to Google's bold motto, "Don't Be Evil" — "all of those things. I think I've always been an idealist in my heart."

Yet Google's conduct in China has in recent months seemed considerably less than idealistic. In January, a few months after Lee opened the Beijing office, the company announced it would be introducing a new version of its search engine for the Chinese market. To obey China's censorship laws, Google's representatives explained, the company had agreed to purge its search results of any Web sites disapproved of by the Chinese government, including Web sites promoting Falun Gong, a government-banned spiritual movement; sites promoting free speech in China; or any mention of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. If you search for "Tibet" or "Falun Gong" most anywhere in the world on google.com, you'll find thousands of blog entries, news items and chat rooms on Chinese repression. Do the same search inside China on google.cn, and most, if not all, of these links will be gone. Google will have erased them completely.

Google's decision did not go over well in the United States. In February, company executives were called into Congressional hearings and compared to Nazi collaborators. The company's stock fell, and protesters waved placards outside the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. Google wasn't the only American high-tech company to run aground in China in recent months, nor was it the worst offender. But Google's executives were supposed to be cut from a different cloth. When the company went public two years ago, its telegenic young founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, wrote in the company's official filing for the Securities and Exchange Commission that Google is "a company that is trustworthy and interested in the public good." How could Google square that with making nice with a repressive Chinese regime and the Communist Party behind it?

It was difficult for me to know exactly how Lee felt about the company's arrangement with China's authoritarian leadership. As a condition of our meeting, Google had demanded that I not raise the issue of government relations; only the executives in Google's California head office were allowed to discuss those matters. But as Lee and I talked about how the Internet was transforming China, he offered one opinion that seemed telling: the Chinese students he meets and employs, Lee said, do not hunger for democracy. "People are actually quite free to talk about the subject," he added, meaning democracy and human rights in China. "I don't think they care that much. I think people would say: 'Hey, U.S. democracy, that's a good form of government. Chinese government, good and stable, that's a good form of government. Whatever, as long as I get to go to my favorite Web site, see my friends, live happily.' " Certainly, he said, the idea of personal expression, of speaking out publicly, had become vastly more popular among young Chinese as the Internet had grown and as blogging and online chat had become widespread. "But I don't think of this as a political statement at all," Lee said. "I think it's more people finding that they can express themselves and be heard, and they love to keep doing that."

It sounded to me like company spin — a curiously deflated notion of free speech. But spend some time among China's nascent class of Internet users, as I have these past months, and you begin to hear such talk somewhat differently. Youth + freedom + equality + don't be evil is an equation with few constants and many possible solutions. What is freedom, just now, to the Chinese? Are there gradations of censorship, better and worse ways to limit information? In America, that seems like an intolerable question — the end of the conversation. But in China, as Google has discovered, it is just the beginning.

Google was not, in fact, a pioneer in China. Yahoo was the first major American Internet company to enter the market, introducing a Chinese-language version of its site and opening up an office in Beijing in 1999. Yahoo executives quickly learned how difficult China was to penetrate — and how baffling the country's cultural barriers can be for Americans. Chinese businesspeople, for example, rarely rely on e-mail, because they find the idea of leaving messages to be socially awkward. They prefer live exchanges, which means they gravitate to mobile phones and short text messages instead. (They avoid voicemail for the same reason; during the weeks I traveled in China, whenever I called a Chinese executive whose phone was turned off, I would get a recording saying that the person was simply "unavailable," and the phone would not accept messages.) The most popular feature of the Internet for Chinese users — much more so than in the United States — is the online discussion board, where long, rollicking arguments and flame wars spill on for thousands of comments. Baidu, a Chinese search engine that was introduced in 2001 as an early competitor to Yahoo, capitalized on the national fervor for chat and invented a tool that allows people to create instant discussion groups based on popular search queries. When users now search on baidu.com for the name of the Chinese N.B.A. star Yao Ming, for example, they are shown not only links to news reports on his games; they are also able to join a chat room with thousands of others and argue about him. Baidu's chat rooms receive as many as five million posts a day.

As Yahoo found, these cultural nuances made the sites run by American companies feel simply foreign to Chinese users — and drove them instead to local portals designed by Chinese entrepreneurs. These sites, including Sina.com and Sohu.com, had less useful search engines, but they were full of links to chat rooms and government-approved Chinese-language news sites. Nationalist feelings might have played a role, too, in the success Chinese-run sites enjoyed at Yahoo's expense. "There's now a very strong sense of pride in supporting the local guy," I was told by Andrew Lih, a Chinese-American professor of media studies at the University of Hong Kong.

Yahoo also was slow to tap into another powerful force in Chinese life: rampant piracy. In most parts of the West, after the Napster wars, movie and music piracy is increasingly understood as an illicit activity; it thrives, certainly, but there is now a stigma against taking too much intellectual content without paying for it. (Hence the success of iTunes.) In China, downloading illegal copies of music, movies and software is as normal and accepted as checking the weather online. Baidu's executives discovered early on that many young users were using the Internet to hunt for pirated MP3's, so the company developed an easy-to-use interface specifically for this purpose. When I sat in an Internet cafe in Beijing one afternoon, a teenager with mutton-chop sideburns a few chairs over from me sipped a Coke and watched a samurai movie he'd downloaded free, while his friends used Baidu to find and pull down pirated tracks from the 50 Cent album "Get Rich or Die Tryin'." Almost one-fifth of Baidu's traffic comes from searching for unlicensed MP3's that would be illegal in the United States. Robin Li, Baidu's 37-year-old founder and C.E.O., is unrepentant. "Right now I think that the record companies may not be happy about the service we are offering," he told me recently, "but I think digital music as a trend is unstoppable."

At first, Google took a different approach to the Chinese market than Yahoo did. In early 2000, Google's engineers quietly set about creating a version of their search engine that could understand character-based Asian languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean. By the end of the year, they had put up a clunky but serviceable Chinese-language version of Google's home page. If you were in China and surfed over to google.com in 2001, Google's servers would automatically detect that you were inside the country and send you to the Chinese-language search interface, much in the same way google.com serves up a French-language interface to users in France.

While Baidu appealed to young MP3 hunters, Google became popular with a different set: white-collar urban professionals in the major Chinese cities, aspirational types who follow Western styles and sprinkle English words into conversation, a class that prides itself on being cosmopolitan rather than nationalistic. By pulling in that audience, Google by the end of 2002 achieved a level of success that had eluded Yahoo: it amassed an estimated 25 percent of all search traffic in China — and it did so working entirely from California, far outside the Chinese government's sphere of influence.

The Great Firewall

Then on Sept. 3, 2002, Google vanished. Chinese workers arrived at their desks to find that Google's site was down, with just an error page in its place. The Chinese government had begun blocking it. China has two main methods for censoring the Web. For companies inside its borders, the government uses a broad array of penalties and threats to keep content clean. For Web sites that originate anywhere else in the world, the government has another impressively effective mechanism of control: what techies call the Great Firewall of China.

When you use the Internet, it often feels placeless and virtual, but it's not. It runs on real wires that cut through real geographical boundaries. There are three main fiber-optic pipelines in China, giant underground cables that provide Internet access for the public and connect China to the rest of the Internet outside its borders. The Chinese government requires the private-sector companies that run these fiber-optic networks to specially configure "router" switches at the edge of the network, where signals cross into foreign countries. These routers — some of which are made by Cisco Systems, an American firm — serve as China's new censors.

If you log onto a computer in downtown Beijing and try to access a Web site hosted on a server in Chicago, your Internet browser sends out a request for that specific Web page. The request travels over one of the Chinese pipelines until it hits the routers at the border, where it is then examined. If the request is for a site that is on the government's blacklist — and there are lots of them — it won't get through. If the site isn't blocked wholesale, the routers then examine the words in the requested page's Internet address for blacklisted terms. If the address contains a word like "falun" or even a coded term like "198964" (which Chinese dissidents use to signify June 4, 1989, the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre), the router will block the signal. Back in the Internet cafe, your browser will display an error message. The filters can be surprisingly sophisticated, allowing certain pages from a site to slip through while blocking others. While I sat at one Internet cafe in Beijing, the government's filters allowed me to surf the entertainment and sports pages of the BBC but not its news section.

Google posed a unique problem for the censors: Because the company had no office at the time inside the country, the Chinese government had no legal authority over it — no ability to demand that Google voluntarily withhold its search results from Chinese users. And the firewall only half-worked in Google's case: it could block sites that Google pointed to, but in some cases it would let slip through a list of search results that included banned sites. So if you were in Shanghai and you searched for "human rights in China" on google.com, you would get a list of search results that included Human Rights in China (hrichina.org), a New York-based organization whose Web site is banned by the Chinese government. But if you tried to follow the link to hrichina.org, you would get nothing but an error message; the firewall would block the page. You could see that the banned sites existed, in other words, but you couldn't reach them. Government officials didn't like this situation — Chinese citizens were receiving constant reminders that their leaders felt threatened by certain subjects — but Google was popular enough that they were reluctant to block it entirely.

In 2002, though, something changed, and the Chinese government decided to shut down all access to Google. Why? Theories abound. Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, whose responsibilities include government relations, told me that he suspects the block might have been at the instigation of a competitor — one of its Chinese rivals. Brin is too diplomatic to accuse anyone by name, but various American Internet executives told me they believe that Baidu has at times benefited from covert government intervention. A young Chinese-American entrepreneur in Beijing told me that she had heard that the instigator of the Google blockade was Baidu, which in 2002 had less than 3 percent of the search market compared with Google's 24 percent. "Basically, some Baidu people sat down and did hundreds of searches for banned materials on Google," she said. (Like many Internet businesspeople I spoke with in China, she asked to remain anonymous, fearing retribution from the authorities.) "Then they took all the results, printed them up and went to the government and said, 'Look at all this bad stuff you can find on Google!' That's why the government took Google offline." Baidu strongly denies the charge, and when I spoke to Guo Liang, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, he dismissed the idea and argued that Baidu is simply a stronger competitor than Google, with a better grasp of Chinese desires. Still, many Beijing high-tech insiders told me that it is common for domestic Internet firms to complain to the government about the illicit content of competitors, in the hope that their rivals will suffer the consequences. In China, the censorship regime is not only a political tool; it is also a competitive one — a cudgel that private firms use to beat one another with.

Self-Discipline Awards

When I visited a dingy Internet cafe one November evening in Beijing, its 120 or so cubicles were crammed with teenagers. (Because computers and home Internet connections are so expensive, many of China's mostly young Internet users go online in these cafes, which charge mere pennies per hour and provide fast broadband — and cold soft drinks.) Everyone in the cafe looked to be settled in for a long evening of lightweight entertainment: young girls in pink and yellow Hello Kitty sweaters juggled multiple chat sessions, while upstairs a gang of young Chinese soldiers in olive-drab coats laughed as they crossed swords in the medieval fantasy game World of Warcraft. On one wall, next to a faded kung-fu movie poster, was a yellow sign that said, in Chinese characters, "Do not go to pornographic or illegal Web sites." The warning seemed almost beside the point; nobody here looked even remotely likely to be hunting for banned Tiananmen Square retrospectives. I asked the cafe manager, a man with huge aviator glasses and graying hair, how often his clients try to view illegal content. Not often, he said with a chuckle, and when they do, it's usually pornography. He said he figured it was the government's job to keep banned materials inaccessible. "If it's not supposed to be seen," he said, "it's not supposed to be seen."

One mistake Westerners frequently make about China is to assume that the government is furtive about its censorship. On the contrary, the party is quite matter of fact about it — proud, even. One American businessman who would speak only anonymously told me the story of attending an award ceremony last year held by the Internet Society of China for Internet firms, including the major Internet service providers. "I'm sitting there in the audience for this thing," he recounted, "and they say, 'And now it's time to award our annual Self-Discipline Awards!' And they gave 10 companies an award. They gave them a plaque. They shook hands. The minister was there; he took his picture with each guy. It was basically like Excellence in Self-Censorship — and everybody in the audience is, like, clapping." Internet censorship in China, this businessman explained, is presented as a benevolent police function. In January, the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau created two cuddly little anime-style cartoon "Internet Police" mascots named "Jingjing" and "Chacha"; each cybercop has a blog and a chat window where Chinese citizens can talk to them. As a Shenzhen official candidly told The Beijing Youth Daily, "The main function of Jingjing and Chacha is to intimidate." The article went on to explain that the characters are there "to publicly remind all Netizens to be conscious of safe and healthy use of the Internet, self-regulate their online behavior and maintain harmonious Internet order together."

Intimidation and "self-regulation" are, in fact, critical to how the party communicates its censorship rules to private-sector Internet companies. To be permitted to offer Internet services, a private company must sign a license agreeing not to circulate content on certain subjects, including material that "damages the honor or interests of the state" or "disturbs the public order or destroys public stability" or even "infringes upon national customs and habits." One prohibition specifically targets "evil cults or superstition," a clear reference to Falun Gong. But the language is, for the most part, intentionally vague. It leaves wide discretion for any minor official in China's dozens of regulatory agencies to demand that something he finds offensive be taken offline.

Government officials from the State Council Information Office convene weekly meetings with executives from the largest Internet service companies — particularly major portals that run news stories and host blogs and discussion boards — to discuss what new topics are likely to emerge that week that the party would prefer be censored. "It's known informally as the 'wind-blowing meeting' — in other words, which way is the wind blowing," the American businessman told me. The government officials provide warnings for the days ahead, he explained. "They say: 'There's this party conference going on this week. There are some foreign dignitaries here on this trip.' "

American Internet firms typically arrive in China expecting the government to hand them an official blacklist of sites and words they must censor. They quickly discover that no master list exists. Instead, the government simply insists the firms interpret the vague regulations themselves. The companies must do a sort of political mind reading and intuit in advance what the government won't like. Last year, a list circulated online purporting to be a blacklist of words the government gives to Chinese blogging firms, including "democracy" and "human rights." In reality, the list had been cobbled together by a young executive at a Chinese blog company. Every time he received a request to take down a posting, he noted which phrase the government had objected to, and after a while he developed his own list simply to help his company avoid future hassles.

The penalty for noncompliance with censorship regulations can be serious. An American public-relations consultant who recently worked for a major domestic Chinese portal recalled an afternoon when Chinese police officers burst into the company's offices, dragged the C.E.O. into a conference room and berated him for failing to block illicit content. "He was pale with fear afterward," she said. "You have to understand, these people are terrified, just terrified. They're seriously worried about slipping up and going to jail. They think about it every day they go into the office."

As a result, Internet executives in China most likely censor far more material than they need to. The Chinese system relies on a classic psychological truth: self-censorship is always far more comprehensive than formal censorship. By having each private company assume responsibility for its corner of the Internet, the government effectively outsources the otherwise unmanageable task of monitoring the billions of e-mail messages, news stories and chat postings that circulate every day in China. The government's preferred method seems to be to leave the companies guessing, then to call up occasionally with angry demands that a Web page be taken down in 24 hours. "It's the panopticon," says James Mulvenon, a China specialist who is the head of a Washington policy group called the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis. "There's a randomness to their enforcement, and that creates a sense that they're looking at everything."

The government's filtering, while comprehensive, is not total. One day a banned site might temporarily be visible, if the routers are overloaded — or if the government suddenly decides to tolerate it. The next day the site might disappear again. Generally, everyday Internet users react with caution. They rarely push the government's limits. There are lines that cannot be crossed, and without actually talking about it much, everyone who lives and breathes Chinese culture understands more or less where those lines are. This is precisely what makes the environment so bewildering to American Internet companies. What's allowed? What's not allowed?

In contrast to the confusion most Americans experience, Chinese businessmen would often just laugh when I asked whether the government's censorship regime was hard to navigate. "I'll tell you this, it's not more hard than dealing with Sarbanes and Oxley," said Xin Ye, a founding executive of Sohu.com, one of China's biggest Yahoo-like portals. (He was referring to the American law that requires publicly held companies to report in depth on their finances.) Another evening I had drinks in a Shanghai jazz bar with Charles Chao, the president of Sina, the country's biggest news site. When I asked him how often he needs to remove postings from the discussion boards on Sina.com, he said, "It's not often." I asked if that meant once a week, once a month or less often; he demurred. "I don't think I can talk about it," he said. Yet he seemed less annoyed than amused by my line of questioning. "I don't want to call it censorship," he said. "It's like in every country: they have a bias. There are taboos you can't talk about in the U.S., and everyone knows it."

Jack Ma put it more bluntly: "We don't want to annoy the government." Ma is the hyperkinetic C.E.O. of Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce firm. I met him in November in the lobby of the China World Hotel in Beijing, just after Ma's company had closed one of the biggest deals in Chinese Internet history. Yahoo, whose share of the Chinese search-engine market had fallen (according to one academic survey) to just 2.3 percent, had paid $1 billion to buy 40 percent of Alibaba and had given Ma complete control over all of Yahoo's services in China, hoping he could do a better job with it. From his seat on a plush sofa, Ma explained Alibaba's position on online speech. "Anything that is illegal in China — it's not going to be on our search engine. Something that is really no good, like Falun Gong?" He shook his head in disgust. "No! We are a business! Shareholders want to make money. Shareholders want us to make the customer happy. Meanwhile, we do not have any responsibilities saying we should do this or that political thing. Forget about it!"

A Bit of a Revolution

Last fall, at a Starbucks in Beijing, I met with China's most famous political blogger. Zhao Jing, a dapper, handsome 31-year-old in a gray sweater, seemed positively exuberant as he explained how radically China had changed since the Web arrived in the late 1990's. Before, he said, the party controlled every single piece of media, but then Chinese began logging onto discussion boards and setting up blogs, and it was as if a bell jar had lifted. Even if you were still too cautious to talk about politics, the mere idea that you could publicly state your opinion about anything — the weather, the local sports scene — felt like a bit of a revolution.

Zhao (who now works in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times) pushed the limits further than most. After college, he took a job as a hotel receptionist in a small city. He figured that if he was lucky, he might one day own his own business. When he went online in 1998, though, he realized that what he really wanted to do was to speak out on political questions. He began writing essays and posting them on discussion boards. Soon after he started his online writing, a newspaper editor offered him a job as a reporter.

"This is what the Internet does," Zhao said, flashing a smile. "One week after I went on the Internet, I had a reputation all over the province. I never thought I could be a writer. But I realized the problem wasn't me — it was my small town." Zhao lost his reporting job in March 2003 after his paper published an essay by a retired official advocating political reform; the government retaliated by shutting the paper down. Still eager to write, in December 2004 Zhao started his blog, hosted on a blogging service with servers in the U.K. His witty pro-free-speech essays, written under the name Michael Anti, were soon drawing thousands of readers a day. Last August, the government used the Great Firewall to block his site so that no one in China could read it; defiant, he switched over to Microsoft's blogging tool, called MSN Spaces. The government was almost certainly still monitoring his work, but remarkably, he continued writing. Zhao knew he was safe, he told me, because he knew where to draw the line.

"If you talk every day online and criticize the government, they don't care," he said. "Because it's just talk. But if you organize — even if it's just three or four people — that's what they crack down on. It's not speech; it's organizing. People say I'm brave, but I'm not." The Internet brought Zhao a certain amount of political influence, yet he seemed less excited about the way his blog might transform the government and more excited about the way it had transformed his sense of himself. Several young Chinese told me the same thing. If the Internet is bringing a revolution to China, it is experienced mostly as one of self-actualization: empowerment in a thousand tiny, everyday ways.

One afternoon I visited with Jiang Jingyi, a 29-year-old Chinese woman who makes her living selling clothes on eBay. When she opened the door to her apartment in a trendy area of Shanghai, I felt as if I'd accidentally stumbled into a chic SoHo boutique. Three long racks full of puffy winter jackets and sweaters dominated the center of the living room, and neat rows of designer running shoes and boots ringed the walls. As she served me tea in a bedroom with four computers stacked on a desk, Jiang told me, through an interpreter, that she used to work as a full-time graphic designer. But she was a shopaholic, she said, and one day decided to take some of the cheap clothes she'd found at a local factory and put them up for auction online. They sold quickly, and she made a 30 percent profit. Over the next three months, she sold more and more clothes, until one one day she realized that her eBay profits were outstripping her weekly paycheck. She quit her job and began auctioning full time, and now her monthly sales are in excess of 100,000 yuan, or about $12,000.

"My parents can't understand it," she said with a giggle, as she clicked at the computer to show me one of her latest auctions, a winter jacket selling for 300 yuan. (Her description of the jacket translated as "Very trendy! You will look cool!") At the moment, Jiang sells mostly to Chinese in other major cities, since China's rudimentary banking system and the lack of a reliable credit-card network mean there is no easy way to receive payments from outside the country. But when Paypal — eBay's online payment system — finally links the global market with the Chinese market, she says she will become a small international business, marketing cut-rate clothes directly to hipsters in London or Los Angeles.

Google never did figure out exactly why it was knocked offline in 2002 by the Chinese government. The blocking ended abruptly after two weeks, as mysteriously as it had begun. But even after being unblocked, Google still had troubles. The Great Firewall tends to slow down all traffic coming into the country from the world outside. About 15 percent of the time, Google was simply unavailable in China because of data jams. The firewall also began punishing curious minds: whenever someone inside China searched for a banned term, the firewall would often retaliate by sending back a command that tricked the user's computer into believing Google itself had gone dead. For several minutes, the user would be unable to load Google's search page — a digital slap on the wrist, as it were. For Google, these delays and shutdowns were a real problem, because search engines like to boast about delivering results in milliseconds. Baidu, Google's chief Chinese-language rival, had no such problem, because its servers were located on Chinese soil and thus inside the Great Firewall. Worse, Chinese universities had virtually no access to foreign Web sites, which meant that impressionable college students — in other countries, Google's most ardent fans — were flocking instead to Baidu.

Brin and other Google executives realized that the firewall allowed them only two choices, neither of which they relished. If Google remained aloof and continued to run its Chinese site from foreign soil, it would face slowdowns from the firewall and the threat of more arbitrary blockades — and eventually, the loss of market share to Baidu and other Chinese search engines. If it opened up a Chinese office and moved its servers onto Chinese territory, it would no longer have to fight to get past the firewall, and its service would speed up. But then Google would be subject to China's self-censorship laws.

What eventually drove Google into China was a carrot and a stick. Baidu was the stick: by 2005, it had thoroughly whomped its competition, amassing nearly half of the Chinese search market, while Google's market share remained stuck at 27 percent. The carrot was Google's halcyon concept of itself, the belief that merely by improving access to information in an authoritarian country, it would be doing good. Certainly, the company's officials figured, it could do better than the local Chinese firms, which acquiesce to the censorship regime with a shrug. Sure, Google would have to censor the most politically sensitive Web sites — religious groups, democracy groups, memorials of the Tiananmen Square massacre — along with pornography. But that was only a tiny percentage of what Chinese users search for on Google. Google could still improve Chinese citizens' ability to learn about AIDS, environmental problems, avian flu, world markets. Revenue, Brin told me, wasn't a big part of the equation. He said he thought it would be years before Google would make much if any profit in China. In fact, he argued, going into China "wasn't as much a business decision as a decision about getting people information. And we decided in the end that we should make this compromise."

He and his executives began discussing exactly which compromises they could tolerate. They decided that — unlike Yahoo and Microsoft — they would not offer e-mail or blogging services inside China, since that could put them in a position of being forced to censor blog postings or hand over dissidents' personal information to the secret police. They also decided they would not take down the existing, unfiltered Chinese-language version of the google.com engine. In essence, they would offer two search engines in Chinese. Chinese surfers could still access the old google.com; it would produce uncensored search results, though controversial links would still lead to dead ends, and the site would be slowed down and occasionally blocked entirely by the firewall. The new option would be google.cn, where the results would be censored by Google — but would arrive quickly, reliably and unhindered by the firewall.

Brin and his team decided that if they were going to be forced to censor the results for a search for "Tiananmen Square," then they would put a disclaimer at the top of the search results on google.cn explaining that information had been removed in accordance with Chinese law. When Chinese users search for forbidden terms, Brin said, "they can notice what's missing, or at least notice the local control." It is precisely the solution you'd expect from a computer scientist: the absence of information is a type of information. (Google displays similar disclaimers in France and Germany, where they strip out links to pro-Nazi Web sites.)

Brin's team had one more challenge to confront: how to determine which sites to block? The Chinese government wouldn't give them a list. So Google's engineers hit on a high-tech solution. They set up a computer inside China and programmed it to try to access Web sites outside the country, one after another. If a site was blocked by the firewall, it meant the government regarded it as illicit — so it became part of Google's blacklist.

The Google executives signed their license to become a Chinese Internet service in December 2005. They never formally sat down with government officials and received permission to put the disclaimer on censored search results. They simply decided to do it — and waited to see how the government would react.

The China Storm

Google.cn formally opened on Jan. 27 this year, and human-rights activists immediately logged onto the new engine to see how it worked. The censorship was indeed comprehensive: the first page of results for "Falun Gong," they discovered, consisted solely of anti-Falun Gong sites. Google's image-searching engine — which hunts for pictures — produced equally skewed results. A query for "Tiananmen Square" omitted many iconic photos of the protest and the crackdown. Instead, it produced tourism pictures of the square lighted up at night and happy Chinese couples posing before it.

Google's timing could not have been worse. Google.cn was introduced into a political environment that was rapidly souring for American high-tech firms in China. Last September, Reporters Without Borders revealed that in 2004, Yahoo handed over an e-mail user's personal information to the Chinese government. The user, a business journalist named Shi Tao, had used his Chinese Yahoo account to leak details of a government document on press restrictions to a pro-democracy Web site run by Chinese exiles in New York. The government sentenced him to 10 years in prison. Then in December, Microsoft obeyed a government request to delete the writings of Zhao Jing — the free-speech blogger I'd met with in the fall. What was most remarkable about this was that Microsoft's blogging service has no servers located in China; the company effectively allowed China's censors to reach across the ocean and erase data stored on American territory.

Against this backdrop, the Google executives probably expected to appear comparatively responsible and ethical. But instead, as the China storm swirled around Silicon Valley in February, Google bore the brunt of it. At the Congressional hearings where the three companies testified — along with Cisco, makers of hardware used in the Great Firewall — legislators assailed all the firms, but ripped into Google with particular fire. They asked how a company with the slogan "Don't Be Evil" could conspire with China's censors. "That makes you a functionary of the Chinese government," said Jim Leach, an Iowa Republican. "So if this Congress wanted to learn how to censor, we'd go to you."

Zhao Jing's Rankings

In February, I met with Zhao Jing again, two months after his pro-democracy blog was erased by Microsoft. We ordered drinks at a faux-Irish pub in downtown Beijing. Zhao was still as energetic as ever, though he also seemed a bit rueful over his exuberant comments in our last conversation. "I'm more cynical now," he said. His blog had been killed because of a single post. In December, a Chinese newspaper editor was fired, and Zhao called for a boycott of the paper. That apparently crossed the line. It was more than just talk; Zhao had now called for a political action. The government contacted Microsoft to demand the blog be shuttered, and the company complied — earning it a chorus of outrage from free-speech advocates in the United States, who accused Microsoft of having acted without even receiving a formal legal request from the Chinese government.

Microsoft seemed chastened by the public uproar; at the Congressional hearings, the company's director of government relations expressed regret. To try to save face, Microsoft executives pointed out that they had saved a copy of the deleted blog postings and sent them to Zhao. What they did not mention, Zhao told me, is that they refused to e-mail Zhao the postings; they offered merely to burn them onto a CD and mail them to any address in the United States Zhao requested. Microsoft appeared to be so afraid of the Chinese government, Zhao noted with a bitter laugh, that the company would not even send the banned material into China by mail. (Microsoft declined to comment for this article.)

I expected Zhao to be much angrier with the American Internet companies than he was. He was surprisingly philosophical. He ranked the companies in order of ethics, ticking them off with his fingers. Google, he said, was at the top of the pile. It was genuinely improving the quality of Chinese information and trying to do its best within a bad system. Microsoft came next; Zhao was obviously unhappy with its decision, but he said that it had produced such an easy-to-use blogging tool that, on balance, Microsoft was helping Chinese people to speak publicly. Yahoo came last, and Zhao had nothing but venom for the company.

"Google has struck a compromise," he said, and compromises are sometimes necessary. Yahoo's behavior, he added, put it in a different category: "Yahoo is a sellout. Chinese people hate Yahoo." The difference, Zhao said, was that Yahoo had put individual dissidents in serious danger and done so apparently without thinking much about the human damage. (Yahoo did not respond to requests for comment.) Google, by contrast, had avoided introducing any service that could get someone jailed. It was censoring information, but Zhao considered that a sin of omission, rather than of commission.

The Distorted Universe

Zhao's moral calculus was striking, not least because it is so foreign to American ways of thinking. For most Americans, or certainly for most of those who think and write about China, there are no half-measures in democracy or free speech. A country either fully embraces these principles, or it disappears down the slippery slope of totalitarianism. But China's bloggers and Internet users have already lived at the bottom of the slippery slope. From their perspective, the Internet — as filtered as it is — has already changed Chinese society profoundly. For the younger generation, especially, it has turned public speech into a daily act. This, ultimately, is the perspective that Google has adopted, too. And it raises an interesting question: Can an imperfect Internet help change a society for the better?

One Internet executive I spoke to summed up the conundrum of China's Internet as the "distorted universe" problem. What happens to people's worldviews when they do a Google search for Falun Gong and almost exclusively find sites opposed to it, as would happen today on google.cn? Perhaps they would trust Google's authority and assume there is nothing to be found. This is the fear of Christopher Smith, the Republican representative who convened the recent Congressional hearings. "When Google sends you to a Chinese propaganda source on a sensitive subject, it's got the imprimatur of Google," he told me recently. "And that influences the next generation — they think, Maybe we can live with this dictatorship. Without your Lech Walesas, you never get democracy." For Smith, Google's logic is the logic of appeasement. Like the companies that sought to "engage" with apartheid South Africa, Google's executives are too dedicated to profits ever to push for serious political change. (Earlier this month, Google's C.E.O., Eric Schmidt, visited Kai-Fu Lee in Beijing and told journalists that it would be "arrogant" of Google to try to change China's censorship laws.)

But perhaps the distorted universe is less of a problem in China, because — as many Chinese citizens told me — the Chinese people long ago learned to read past the distortions of Communist propaganda and media control. Guo Liang, the professor at the Chinese social sciences academy, told me about one revealing encounter. "These guys at Harvard did a study of the Chinese Internet," Guo said. "I talked to them and asked, 'What were your results?' They said, 'We think the Chinese government tries to control the Internet.' I just laughed. I said, 'We know that!' " Google's filtering of its results was not controversial for Guo because it was nothing new.

Andrew Lih, the Chinese-American professor at the University of Hong Kong, said that many in China take a long-term perspective. "Chinese people have a 5,000-year view of history," he said. "You ban a Web site, and they're like: 'Oh, give it time. It'll come back.' " Or consider the position of a group of Chinese Internet geeks trying to get access to Wikipedia, the massive free online encyclopedia where anyone can write an entry. Currently, all of wikipedia.com is blocked; the group is trying to convince Wikipedia's overseers to agree to the creation of a sanitized Chinese version with the potentially illegal entries removed. They argue that this would leave 99.9 percent of Wikipedia intact, and if that material were freely available in China, they say, it would be a great boon for China, particularly for underfinanced and isolated schools. (So far, Wikipedia has said it will not allow the creation of a censored version of the encyclopedia.)

Given how flexible computer code is, there are plenty of ways to distort the universe — to make its omissions more or less visible. At one point while developing google.cn, Google considered blocking all sites that refer to controversial topics. A search for Falun Gong in China would produce no sites in favor of it, but no sites opposing it either. What sort of effect would that have had? Remember too that when Google introduced its censored google.cn engine, it also left its original google.com Chinese-language engine online. Which means that any Chinese citizen can sit in a Net cafe, plug "Tiananmen Square" into each version of the search engine and then compare the different results — a trick that makes the blacklist somewhat visible. Critics have suggested that Google should go even further and actually publish its blacklist online in the United States, making its act of censorship entirely transparent.

The Super Girl Theory

When I spoke to Kai-Fu Lee in Google's Beijing offices, there were moments that to me felt jarring. One minute he sounded like a freedom-loving Googler, arguing that the Internet inherently empowers its users. But the next minute he sounded more like Jack Ma of Alibaba — insisting that the Chinese have no interest in rocking the boat. It is a circular logic I encountered again and again while talking to China's Internet executives: we don't feel bad about filtering political results because our users aren't looking for that stuff anyway.

They may be right about their users' behavior. But you could just as easily argue that their users are incurious because they're cowed. Who would openly search for illegal content in a public Internet cafe — or even at home, since the government requires that every person with personal Internet access register his name and phone number with the government for tracking purposes? It is also possible that the government's crackdown on the Internet could become more intense if the country's huge population of poor farmers begins agitating online. The government is reasonably tolerant of well-educated professionals online. But the farmers, upset about corrupt local officials, are serious activists, and they pose a real threat to Beijing; they staged 70,000 demonstrations in 2004, many of which the government violently suppressed.

In the eyes of critics, Google is lying to itself about the desires of Chinese Internet users and collaborating with the Communist Party merely to secure a profitable market. To take Lee at his word is to take a leap of faith: that the Internet, simply through its own inherent properties, will slowly chip away at the government's ability to control speech, seeding a cultural change that strongly favors democracy. In this view, there will be no "great man" revolution in China, no Lech Walesa rallying his oppressed countrymen. Instead, the freedom fighters will be a half-billion mostly apolitical young Chinese, blogging and chatting about their dates, their favorite bands, video games — an entire generation that is growing up with public speech as a regular habit.

At one point in our conversation, Lee talked about the "Super Girl" competition televised in China last year, the country's analogue to "American Idol." Much like the American version of the show, it featured young women belting out covers of mainstream Western pop songs amid a blizzard of corporate branding. (The full title of the show was "Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest," in honor of its sponsor.) In each round, viewers could vote for their favorite competitor via text message from their mobile phones. As the season ran its course, it began to resemble a presidential election campaign, with delirious fans setting up Web sites urging voters to pick their favorite singer. In the final episode, eight million young Chinese used their mobile phones to vote; the winner was Li Yuchun, a 21-year-old who dressed like a schoolgirl and sang "Zombie," by the Irish band the Cranberries.

"If you think about a practice for democracy, this is it," Lee said. "People voted for Super Girls. They loved it — they went out and campaigned." It may not be a revolution, in other words, but it might be a start.