How to beat the censors at Google.cn

HONK KONG: Ever since Google launched its “castrated” search engine service in China, it has justifiably been pilloried by defenders of free speech across the world, including in the US Congress.

The capitulation of big business when it comes to expanding business interests in Orwellian China is, of course, completely indefensible. However, for information-starved Chinese netizens, access to even a suboptimal Google service expands the range of search options – and makes available even information that censors are working overtime to keep out of the public domain.

It helps that an enterprising bunch of netizens and ethical hackers are forever pushing the limits with some imaginative – and inventive – use of the algorithms that run these search engines. 

Indicatively, netizens reported gleefully that you could beat the censors at Google.cn (Google’s Chinese-language search service) if you keyed in your search terms in capital letters.

As word got around – the website Crypticide went public with this, with an encouraging postscript: “Enjoy the liberation while you can, citizens” — Google responded with amazing alacrity, and plugged that loophole, but the net explorers are now looking for other chinks in the Great Firewall of China. 

And God knows there are other ways of beating the system. For instance, on Google’s image search facility (images.google.cn), a search on the keyword “Tiananmen” retrieves only touristy images of the landmark in Beijing; none of the images of the June 4 1989 massacre — including that famous picture of the wiry young student, his arms stretched out, barricading a convoy of tanks—come up.

But repeat the search with a mis-spelling — key in ‘Tianamen’ — and you get a whole host of uncensored images, including graphic pictures of students killed in the bloody crackdown.

Of course, it’s just a matter of time before Google plugs this loophole as well, but clearly, Chinese hackers have proved they have what it takes to stay one step ahead of Google’s millionaire nerds. 

Hong Kong-based blogger and media market researcher Roland Soong, who has in the past served as a translator for the FBI, has, in an interview to BBC World, put the issue in perspective.

He says that calling for a boycott of Google —on grounds that it has capitulated on cherished freedom-of-speech values — is short-sighted. “And in any case,” he says, “people in China will not appreciate that because these are esoteric issues for them.”

Soong’s point is that insofar as Google.cn’s presence expands the range of search options for the typical Chinese Internet user, calls for a boycott are self-defeating. Unlike with the Chinese search engine Baidu (baidu.com), where the censorship is far more rigid, Soong says that with Google.cn, “there are different ways of finding things. You can try any number of subtle combinations. Google gives you more opportunities to triangulate.”

In China, there is an ancient rhyming peasant saying that goes: “Three smelly cobblers (with their wits combined) can beat Zhu Geliang” (an administrator of the Shu kingdom, and the Chinese equivalent of Birbal for his famed wit and wisdom).

Chairman Mao Zeodong used to quote this saying extensively in the 1950s to exhort the people of newly liberated China to find inventive solutions to problems. Today, China’s keyboard warriors and hackers are proving the wisdom of that saying.