China Issues Warning to Google’s Partners

BEIJING — Chinese authorities have warned major partners of Google’s China’s based search engine that they must comply with censorship laws even if Google does not, an industry expert with knowledge of the notice said Sunday.

Chinese government information authorities warned some of Google’s biggest Web partners on Friday that they should prepare backup plans in case Google ceases censoring the results of searches on its local Chinese-language search engine, said the expert, who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation by the government.

The warning was the latest indication that two months of negotiations between Chinese officials and Google over government censorship have reached an impasse. The two sides have been at a standoff since Google announced in January that it planned to stop self-censoring the results of searches on its Chinese site, google.cn, in reaction to what it described as China-based cyber-attacks on its databases and e-mail accounts.

The warning was intended to head off a wave of frustrated users should their internet searches be stymied because of Google’s conflict with the government. Google controls nearly 30 of China’s Internet search market.

China’s most popular Web portal, www.sina.com.cn, features the Google’s search box in the middle of its home page. Ganji.com, another highly popular Web site, displays Google’s search box in its upper-left hand corner.

However Google is unlikely to stop censoring its results, people with knowledge of the situation said. Instead, they said it was more likely that that the company would shut down the search engine and try to reach Chinese customers instead through its search engine based in the United States.

If it did close its Chinese search engine, Google has other operations in China that it hopes to save, including a toehold in the country’s lucrative mobile phone business.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive officer, said last week that “something will happen soon” to resolve Google’s fate in China. Reporters have been camped at Google’s Beijing headquarters since then in anticipation of an announcement that the firm would close down some or all of its China operations.

Since Google opened the China-based service about four years ago, it has filtered responses to users’ searches to remove results that the government finds objectionable, from pornography to political topics such as Chinese human-rights issues. Despite the self-censorship, the company has drawn a strong following, especially among educated and wealthier Chinese internet users.

Google has a widespread network of Chinese partners who have set up their Web sites to link to Google’s Chinese-language search engine. The government’s warning was a reminder to Web sites that they are responsible for any content on their sites, even if provided by a third party like Google.

Those companies could switch to more government-friendly services like Baidu, the rival search engine that holds the dominant share of the China market. Should they remain loyal to Google, the companies could satisfy government censors by filtering their customers’ searches themselves, excluding objectionable topics before relaying them to Google.

But that option could prove difficult, especially for smaller companies, who would have to buy or develop new software to do that job. It would be easier for most to simply switch to another search engine.

If Google refused to censor its searches, industry specialists said the government would most likely disrupt the service temporarily, frustrating users and driving them away from the search engine and possibly from its partners’ Web sites.

Users of Google’s worldwide search engine, google.com, would be likely to find their situation unchanged, industry specialists said. The site is accessible within China, but Chinese internet users can only gain access to Web pages that have been approved by Chinese censors, rather than Google’s own employees.

Asked Sunday about the Chinese government’s warning to Google partners, a Google spokeswoman, Courtney Hohne, declined to comment. A company statement last week said that Google had “been very clear that we are no longer going to self-censor our search results.”

“We are in active discussions with the Chinese government but we are not going to engage in a running commentary about those conversations,” the statement said.

China’s position has seemed equally unyielding. On Friday, Li Yizhong, China’s minister of industry and information technology, warned Google, “If you want to do something that disobeys Chinese law and regulations, you are unfriendly, you are irresponsible and you will have to bear the consequences.”

Rediscovering Russia

India's relations with Russia over the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union have alternated between indifference and neglect, on the one hand, and active cooperation and intense friendship, on the other. Both states of the relationship have sprung from the kind of situation Indian and Russian policymakers have found themselves in at different times. Broadly speaking, New Delhi and Moscow have both tended to calibrate the bilateral thermostat with an eye on the temperature in Washington. When the U.S. tries to cosy up to either power, India and Russia are quite happy to take for granted, if not forget, each other. But when Washington's mien is frosty and unhelpful, comfort is sought in the warmth of druzhba. However, the U.S. attitude towards the two is not always symmetric. The George W. Bush years, for example, saw a deterioration in America's relations with Russia over issues like missile defence and the expansion of Nato, even as U.S. engagement with India scaled new strategic heights. Although India's relations with Russia remained on an even keel, the Manmohan Singh government did not accord Moscow the kind of priority it deserved. Indeed, with the Bush administration using the nuclear deal to push for gains across a broad spectrum of areas, especially military procurement, India's relations with Russia came under a bit of strain.

The coming to power of Barack Obama in the U.S. has restored some sense of balance to Indian foreign policy, with the government scrambling to revive old friendships in the face of Washington's changed policies towards the region, especially Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is the geopolitical context for India's rediscovery of Russia. Though the Russian side today lacks the same narrow motivation for embracing India more tightly — after all, Mr. Obama has tried to repair relations with Moscow — Vladimir Putin, a strong leader with a clear strategic vision, realises it is important for Russia to expand the ambit of its cooperation with India. On Afghanistan, both share the same anxieties about U.S. indulgence towards the Pakistani military and the proposal to integrate a ‘reformed' Taliban leadership in the power structures at Kabul. On the nuclear energy and defence fronts, Russia has stood the test of time as a valued friend and partner, supplying India with attractively priced advanced equipment without preconditions at a time when other countries have a long list of collateral demands. To be sure, a lot more needs to be done to add ballast to the relationship, especially on the trade and business-to-business fronts. But it is essential that the current period of intense engagement not be allowed to falter once the U.S. makes some fresh overture to India.

Art review

A series of drawings with single male figures and confronting pairs were partly pencilled with a delicate realism but left unfinished or divided into outlined white segments and blackened ones.

Expression of condition The recent Khoj residency at 1, Shanthi Road Studio/Gallery brought a dialogue between two young artists from Pakistan and India centred on the body as a container and expression of the human condition. The resulting display (February 27 to March 2) had a video by Imran Mudassar whose restrained simplicity was gravely effective. A poster-like image of a man’s back was shot in one focus registering the paper gradually tearing and coming off under the impact of small objects, perhaps darts, hitting it. The apparent lightness of the handling and a lack of the literal made this human target hold the helpless situation of people in that country and relate it broadly. The works of Bharathesh D Yadav sustained his dominant preoccupation with the body of flesh and aspirations. A series of drawings with single male figures and confronting pairs were partly pencilled with a delicate realism but left unfinished or divided into outlined white segments and blackened ones. Surrounded by flies, the nude bodies exuded an intuition of contrariness, of simultaneous lofty and physically repulsive sensations entrenched in our existence. His video “Kaya I” in a more complex manner dealt with such state of conflicted existential immersion over a changing sequence of images that suggested global and immediate depletion of organic resources and violence amid evocations of turbulent cosmic processes and their symbolic, spiritual representations, while faces of people crying in horror and despair recurred throughout. Whilst this work may have used digital design somewhat in excess, the other video “Room” was more cogent and quietly forceful. The repetition of slow, horizontal movement, disappearance and reappearance in a line of young men seemingly watching TV and a string of dolls, their limbs, mannequin torsos and fashion or aerobics scenes let one sense the phenomenon of passively accepted and corporeally manifested transformation of live people into likenesses of objects of commercial entertainment. ‘Mapping fragrances’ in the same space was another interesting exhibition by Medha from Mumbai.  The artist studied and recorded the community of zaya jasmine cultivators in rural Goa and Udupi. Adopting this beautiful and fabulously aromatic flower as the embodiment human work, relationships and emotions, in an installation, video and photographic stills, she paid a tribute to the people involved, the sumptuous decorations they make and the blossom itself. Whereas the low, white relief on the floor moulded of compressed yet plastic masses of jasmine blossoms and bearing a gold borderline map presented Medha’s loving gesture, the camera images oscillate between and integrated documentation with the intimacy of aesthetically observed but raw-gentle close-ups of richly garlanded vahanas, halls and ceilings as well as of hands packing, transporting and selling flowers. The whole may not have been spectacular or complex. Nevertheless, the very basic but sensitive approach conjured an effect of material and emotive connectedness between the people, the flowers and the festive ornamentation, the element of enchantment and desire to worshipfully decorate temples, churches and their icons further linking the often conflicted faiths in the rudimentary human plane. Words of (non)violence The installation by Animisha S Naganur (Samuha, March 6 to 8) was one more cathartic effort of an idealistic but disillusioned person to face our far from optimistic reality which, pervaded by extreme political and social violence, generates nonetheless equally potent notions of and appeals for peace, even if those remain largely helpless. The work took off from a quotation from Mahatma Gandhi in which he admits having nothing new to teach the world where truth and non-violence are eternal. Two walls in the gallery created almost a surround filled with multitudes of regularly disposed thin shapes of machine guns and revolvers cut out of newspaper pages with information about current terrorist attacks and other belligerent events of cruelty. Behind Gandhi’s words and the exhibition title “We made it!” could be seen next to a black cube carrying a three-dimensional revolver of newspaper but contained-restrained within a circle. The sheer lightness of the treatment and inclusion of a vast space enhanced the serious issue, while also underscoring the accepted normalcy and hopelessness of the deeply ingrained state, suggested already by the resigned tone of Gandhi’s sentence. The role of the written word could be recognised then as possessing, perhaps not a dormant potential of preventing or healing aggressiveness, but as at least a saving grace of awareness and wish despite of and against the unbridled, destructive force that living manifests itself though. Again, the installation may not have been formally earth-shaking; however, its sheer matter-of-fact directness in the constructing of the metaphor was successful and touched the viewer on a familiar, hence, strong level.