People’s Daily posts commentary welcoming Google back to China, but stipulates it must observe local laws

People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s mouthpiece, on Monday posted a commentary on its Twitter and Facebook accounts that welcomes US internet giant Google back to mainland China as long as it complies with the relevant laws. The commentary had previously been published by its sister tabloid newspaper Global Times over the weekend.

Google is working on a filtered search engine in China eight years after its previous departure from the country, although approval will be down to Chinese regulators, a person familiar with the plans told the South China Morning Post earlier.

Google’s plan for a filtered search app in China was first reported by The Intercept, while The Information reported Google also had plans for a Toutiao-like news aggregator for the country. Meanwhile Bloomberg reported Google is also in talks with Tencent and others on a potential cloud services business in China.

The commentary says that Google’s decision to exit the Chinese market was a “huge blunder which resulted in the company missing golden chances in the mainland’s internet development”. The commentary states that “Google is welcome to return to the mainland, but it’s a prerequisite that it must comply with the requirements of the law”.

The US-based search engine giant chose to leave China’s market in 2010, shutting down major services including its search engine, Gmail and Google Maps, when the company said it discovered a cyberattack from China and found Gmail accounts of some Chinese human-rights activists had been hacked. The US company’s change of approach in dealing with China’s rigid censorship laws highlights the importance of the Chinese market to US tech giants.  

However, the conditional welcome from state media doesn’t necessarily mean regulators will nod through Google’s re-entry into China.