Feeding frenzy of the curious

With Google.cn lifting censorship of searches, some Chinese netizens have been going crazy with the searches while the going is good. They know it won't last, and they're enjoying the last days of Google.cn.

The Financial Times article (linked below) looks at the issue with some broader context, and asks if the placating approach western businesses and countries have taken with China, has been the right one. Are we doing the average Chinese citizens any favours by playing by the Chinese government's rules? And what happens in the long run when China doesn't actually liberalize? Interesting points to speculate on.

in reference to:

""I've been doing all sorts of crazy searches, really distracting myself from my work," says one. "I've done Tiananmen Square, the love affairs of national leaders, the corruption of leaders' children. Everything.

"Another internet user says the buzz of illicit abandon is reminiscent of the mood in Tiananmen Square itself, shortly before the People's Liberation Army crushed the protests there in 1989. "There is no way that Google will get away with this. They will have to leave China for sure," he adds.

The surreptitious joys of "netizens" may not be alone in existing on borrowed time. Google's defiance of China's censorship regime is indicative of much more than a single company's decision to reassert its open-society principles over the pragmatism by which it originally entered the Chinese market, agreeing then to self-censor in return for business licences. Google's move may suggest that the accommodations made by western companies in China can extend only so far before contorted values snap back into place."
- FT.com / Comment / Analysis - China and the west: Full circle (view on Google Sidewiki)