China - Google

BEIJING, 24.03.10 — China is a nation that builds dams, high-speed rail lines and skyscrapers with abandon. In newly muscular China, sheer force is not just an art, but a bedrock principle . . . Now China has tightened its grip on the variegated world of online information, forcing Google, the world’s premier information provider, to choose between submitting to censorship and leaving the world’s largest community of Internet users.
“The Chinese are very serious about pushing their soft-power agenda,” Bill Bishop, a Beijing Internet entrepreneur, and author of the technology blog Digicha, says “Google just put a big hole in that sales pitch, and I think they know that.” China’s leaders appear aware of their dilemma. NY Times.