Archive

A spokesperson from the Chinese government has recently spoken out to deny any involvement in the recent cyber attacks that targeted several companies including search giant Google, saying the claims made by them were “groundless”.

The spokesperson, from China’s ministry of industry and information technology said: “The accusation that the Chinese government participated in [any] cyber attack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless. We [are] firmly opposed to that”.

They then continued to add “China’s policy on internet safety is transparent and consistent.

On an official post on the Google blog, a spokesperson revealed that the Google Mail (Gmail) accounts of Chinese human rights supporters had been unlawfully accessed in a strategic and targeted cyber-attack, which was believed to have originated in China.

Although Google did not accuse the Chinese government of being involved in the attacks, Google recently had threatened to withdraw from China unless the state agreed to stop restricting free access to information through its search engine.

The state-run newspaper China Daily said that America's internet strategy is going "to exploit its advantages in internet funds, technology and marketing and export its politics, commerce and culture to other nations for political, commercial and cultural interests of the world's only superpower."

While the situation is still far from resolved, China stated last week that Google and other international companies had to obey their laws and traditions if they wished to continue to operate in China.

This led to Google postponing the launch of their two mobile phones there, and is considering a full withdrawal from the country's internet market if the Chinese government doesn’t stop censoring search results on the company's Chinese search engine - a scenario that is looking increasingly unlikely.