Google’s decision to evade censorship in China by rerouting Chinese users to its Hongkong site is threatening Google’s content provider license in China. However, Google says it has no intent to promote censorship or even engage in self-censorship and has come up with a new solution to secure its license. However, we wonder if that solution will sit well with the Chinese government.

Google said that it has begun sending some of its Chinese users to a new Google.cn landing page that complies with the requests of the Chinese government and that provides services that are approved – such as music search and text translation – and can be provided without local filtering. However, just below the text field, Google has placed a bold link to its Hongkong-based search site, which gives Chinese users a choice of filtered or un-filtered search.

Google says that opening up Google.cn again was necessary, unless the company accepted a scenario in which it would be shut down by the Chinese government: “It’s clear from conversations we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable—and that if we continue redirecting users our Internet Content Provider license will not be renewed (it’s up for renewal on June 30),” the company wrote in a blog post. “Without an ICP license, we can’t operate a commercial website like Google.cn—so Google would effectively go dark in China.

This highly political game between Google and the Chinese government is about to become much more interesting, as we wonder how China will react to Google’s solution.  I can’t quite remember a time or situation in which a private entity challenged one of the world’s leading economic engines and a rather difficult government in a similar aggressive way.

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