From June, since the crackdown of the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, the biggest email service of the world has been largely inaccessible within China. After the apparent blocking of the last easy way of gaining access to Gmail was blocked, the state-run media said that the blame for the shutdown of the popular email service in China lies on Google and the company’s unwillingness to follow the Chinese law. In an editorial, the Global Times said that the search engine giant is welcomed in China on the prerequisite that it will comply with the rules laid down by Chinese law. However, conflict is created because of the company’s reluctance to be restricted by the Chinese laws.

The biggest email service of the world, Gmail, has been mostly inaccessible in China after the run up in June when the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on demonstrators of pro-democracy. The service could be accessed by users as long as third party email applications were used, but according to the founder of a firm based in Beijing called Danwei, which tracks the internet and Chinese media, Jeremy Goldkorn, this method has also been banned in recent days by the Chinese government.

The most sophisticated and extensive internet censorship system is operated by China, which is called the ‘great firewall’. Foreign websites such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are blocked quite frequently along with any content that’s deemed offensive and objectionable by the ruling Communist party. In 2010, Google decided to withdraw from China because of a fallout with Beijing because of censorship problems. The Global Times, the newspaper that’s very close to the ruling Communist party, said that the primary issue was the willingness of Google to follow Chinese law on which the attitude of the country remains thoroughly steadfast.

The newspaper also added that the access to the email service problems could be caused by Google, the Chinese side or even a combination of both. On Monday, a Google spokesman said that they had performed an internal check on their end and hadn’t discovered anything wrong there. The Global Times said that if Gmail had indeed been blocked by China, it probably was because of some security issues that may have emerged and so the reality should be accepted by the users. It further added that it was essential for people to have faith that there is logic in the internet policy set out by China because it has developed it and operates it as per the fundamental interests of the country.

Obviously, people don’t want the email service to be shut down because it isn’t in their best interests. The issue was brought up on Monday at a press conference and Hua Chunying, spokeswoman of the Chinese foreign ministry, said that they weren’t aware of the blocking of the service. She said that the legal business operations of foreign investors are always supported and welcomed by China and this fact should be stressed because they didn’t block the email service.

comments