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Rerouting of traffic from US Web sites tells all, Shieh says

China has shown its true colors by "hijacking" three major US-based Internet search engines, Government Information Office Minister Shieh Jhy-wey (謝志偉) said on Friday.

Shieh was responding to foreign wire service reports that Chinese Internet users trying to search on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Web sites have been directed to the Chinese-owned search engine Baidu since Tibetan spiritual and political leader in exile the Dalai Lama was awarded a US Congressional Gold Medal on Wednesday.

The reports said China is likely retaliating for the award and for US President George W. Bush's appearance in public with the Dalai Lama -- the first time a US president has met him in public.

Shieh said that although China is already notoriously authoritarian, it was nevertheless shocking that the leadership would dare to cut off the flow of Chinese visitors to the three major search engines.

The move also indicates the duplicity in the "peace overture" to Taiwan made by Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in his speech at the 17th Chinese Communist Party National Congress, Shieh said.

Hu called for an end to cross-strait enmity and for a cross-strait peace pact under Beijing's "one-China" vision.

Beijing's methods of blocking freedom of information, such as redirecting traffic from search engines and blocking Web sites including YouTube and Live.com, show why China deserved its ranking at the seventh from the bottom of Reporters without Borders' 2007 Worldwide Press Freedom Index released on Tuesday, he said.

Google has confirmed that its Chinese site is being blocked and the traffic redirected, while Microsoft said it was looking into the matter.

"It seems like China is fed up with the US, so as a way to fight back, they redirected virtually all search traffic from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to Baidu," analysts Danny Sullivan and Barry Schwartz wrote at Search Engine Roundtable, a Web site that focuses on Internet search engines.

The authors said it was not clear how the searches were being redirected, although it is known that Beijing uses a variety of filters to block what it deems to be inappropriate information on the Web, such as search results related to the Dalai Lama.

"Some have accused Baidu of hijacking the traffic, but we think it's likely that China is upset with the US over the award it granted to the Dalai Lama and is retaliating by hurting US-based search engines," Sullivan and Schwartz said.
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