China defended its extensive censorship and brushed aside hacking claims on Thursday, telling companies not to buck state control of the Internet after US search giant Google threatened to quit the country. The Google dispute could stoke tensions between China and the United States, already at odds over the value of the yuan currency, trade quarrels, US arms sales to Taiwan and climate change policy.
It threw a spotlight on hacking and the Internet controls that Google says have stifled its business in China. Google's challenge to Beijing came as foreign businesses have voiced growing frustration at China's business climate, even as Chinese economic growth outpaces the rest of the world.
Google, the world's top search engine, said it may shut its Chinese-language google.cn website and offices in China after a cyber-attack originating from China that also targeted other firms and human rights campaigners using its Gmail service.
The company, which has struggled to compete with local market leader Baidu, said it would discuss with the Chinese government ways to offer an unfiltered search engine, or pull out. But Minister Wang Chen of China's State Council Information Office said Internet companies should help the one-party government steer the fast-changing society, which now has 360 million Internet users, more than any other country.
Wang did not mention Google, but his comments suggested little room for compromise in the feud over Internet freedom. "Our country is at a crucial stage of reform and development, and this is a period of marked social conflicts," Wang said in an interview that appeared on the Information Office's website. His comments largely echoed a speech he made in November.
"Properly guiding Internet opinion is a major measure for protecting Internet information security." On Thursday, the Information Office also named five Chinese websites it said had not done enough to stamp out content banned as crude or pornographic. "Step up the clean-up," it demanded on a statement on its website.
Online pornography, hacking, fraud and "rumours" were menaces to Chinese society, Wang said, adding that the government and Internet media both have a responsibility to "guide" opinion. The Information Office is an arm of the China's propaganda system, and Wang's comments were Beijing's first substantial comment on Internet policy after Google threatened to retreat from the world's third-biggest economy.