A senior Chinese official has warned that Google’s chances of re-entering China could be scuppered if Donald Trump’s talks with President Xi go badly on Friday.
The internet search giant had been making progress in mending relations with China, after an almost total block on its services since 2014.
“China’s relationship [with Google] is improving, and both sides’ leaders have met on several different occasions,” Liu Binjie, a senior parliamentarian with knowledge of China’s dialogues with Google, told the Financial Times in an interview.
But when asked about the timeline for Google’s services being unblocked in China, Mr Liu warned that “this depends on the bigger premise of Sino-American relations”.
“Trump has said some very severe things about Chinese trade. If this continues, [Google’s] progress will be affected,” Mr Liu said, adding that continued unpredictability and conflict in the two countries’ relationship would slow things down.
Trump has said some very severe things about Chinese trade. If this continues, [Google’s] progress will be affected
Google pulled its search engine service from China in 2010 after coming into conflict with the government over the company’s decision to stop censoring searches involving politically sensitive keywords, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre.
But with more than a billion mobile internet users, and a third of the world’s users of Google’s Android smartphone operating system, China’s mobile market has become too big an opportunity to miss, analysts say, forcing Google to renew its efforts to participate.
China generates the most mobile app store revenue of any country, according to App Annie. However, the Google Play app store is blocked there, meaning the company got nothing of the $19.1bn that the Chinese spent on mobile apps last year.
“The main things that have changed for Google are the size of what they’re missing out on and the management team,” said Duncan Clark, a China tech expert and founder of BDA, a consultancy.
“Censorship was a major factor in Google’s decision to exit the China search market, which was led by Sergey Brin. Larry Page, chief executive since 2011, has to weigh commercial factors more heavily,” Mr Clark added.
While Mr Liu acknowledged that the censorship of politically sensitive keywords remained the main issue facing the unblocking of Google’s services in China, he added that Google “better understands the issue now”, and that both sides had continued to discuss it.
Last week, Google relaunched its Google Translate mobile app in China, which had previously been blocked, by working with a Chinese partner to provide a China-based server and the licence required for providing internet content.
In Google’s absence, the Android app market has fragmented into many different app stores run by local tech giants such as Baidu, China’s dominant search engine. Analysts and developers see this fragmentation as a big obstacle for the possible entry of Google Play.
A major challenge for Google is the “fine balance between acceding to China’s censorship requests and the need to be seen as an independent global media brand”, said Lawrence Cheok of IDC, a market research firm.
Google has always maintained a presence in China and has a staff of 500 engineers and sales personnel in Beijing and Shanghai. Its advertising business in China has been growing, because of increased interest from Chinese retailers in exporting to foreign consumers.
Additional reporting by Xinning Liu
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