AP Photo

Western corporations never die in China, they just fade away. They don't do what Google has threatened to do: Slam the door on its way out. Google's decision to stop censoring its Chinese search engine"”announced on the company's blog on January 12 and thus guaranteed to annoy the propriety-obsessed Chinese leadership"”may have only minor technical impact on Chinese users. Yet it's a bellwether, revealing the true direction and the inherent fragility of the Chinese Internet. 

Of all the post-Tiananmen dreams of Chinese liberation, the Chinese Internet has always been the most enticing. In the early 1990s, a frontal attack on the Communist party's hold on the Chinese state appeared impossible, and dissident attention shifted to a very different strategy opened up...