journal of digital research & publishing - The Sydney eScholarship ...

1 P M J O U R N A L O F D I G I T A L R ESEARCH & P UBLISHING
to offer an explanation through the examination of:
Google China’s business performance;
Censorship and cyber attack; and
Power and assumed responsibility
With 137 million Chinese Internet users in mind (the number has since nearly tripled by
December 2009 to 384 million ­­ Womack and Childs 2010), Google set up its China shop
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cash, intellectual property and an ability to manage complex networks and introverted
workers’ (Barboza and Stone 2010), the web giant could not make headway against its
Chinese rival Baidu, which holds 63 percent market share, compared to Google’s 33
percent.
As on what have contributed to Google’s underachievement, many industry analysts blame
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struggling in China, Google did not ‘trust local executives’ and disregarded the cultural
relevance of different markets (2010). Li Kaifu, Google’s Taiwan born, Columbia educated
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Google China to be in line with the company’s existing business model (Leadership 2010).
However, many Chinese Internet bloggers suggest the reason lie somewhere else: it has
something to do with the rising Chinese nationalism that is materialized through media
choices.
The profound changes in the international media and communications at the threshold
of the new millennium, observed Jeremy Tunstall, the author of Media Were American:
U.S. Mass Media in Decline, are ‘the resilience and probably increasing strength of
national culture, national sentiments and national media’ (2008: IVV). His view was
readily shared by Ying Zhu, a professor from the City University of New York. According
to Zhu, due to ‘the general lack of faith in ‘political and economic self­alliance and self­
regulation of individuals and companies’, majority of the Chinese population that represent
‘intellectual, popular and commercial interests’ has endorsed the government’s new
rhetoric of ‘harmonious society’ and ‘nation unity’ (2008:127). This movement, which is
further aggravated by the constant negatively portrayal of China by western governments
and media, has turned against the arbitrary and missionary style of the West, typically the
United States, in pushing through their liberal democratic ideology. And over time it has
amassed a immense number of followers, most being the less educated youth that compose
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