China Briefing | Chinese must live with a dead Baidu, as Google’s return looks doomed

As Trump teases us with a breakthrough in his US-China trade war talks with Xi Jinping, markets breathe a sigh of relief

But any deal looks unlikely to break down that biggest barrier to China’s digital economy: the Great Firewall

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An article titled ‘Search engine Baidu is dead’ has struck a chord with Chinese internet users. Photo: Internet

Published: 10:31am, 2 Mar 2019Updated: 10:31am, 2 Mar 2019

Following the latest round of trade talks in Washington this month, US President Donald Trump announced he was delaying the March 1 deadline on his threat to impose higher tariffs on US$200 billion worth of Chinese imports. He also teased his audience with the prospect of a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping “soon” to conclude a comprehensive trade agreement, much to the relief of international stock markets.

While details of the agreement are wrapped in secrecy, Trump cited “substantial progress” on issues including intellectual property protection, forced technology transfer, agriculture, services, and currency.

Commentators in Chinese state media expressed optimism and started to prep citizens that those so-called “concessions” the government was previously reluctant to make were in fact the measures it would have to undertake anyway to move the economy forward and improve people’s living standards.

But the agreement, comprehensive as it sounds, is most likely to miss out one major area of contention: China’s Great Firewall and other barriers to the opening up of its digital economy.

China’s sophisticated internet censorship regime has blocked numerous overseas websites, including the South China Morning Post, and search engines and social media platforms including Google, Twitter and YouTube.

China’s sophisticated internet censorship regime has blocked numerous overseas websites including the South China Morning Post. Photo: Reuters

Judging by media reports and official statements from both countries, the digital world has not been high on the agenda of Chinese and American negotiators, other than in relation to US allegations of cyber theft by the Chinese – an issue that was discussed alongside that of forced technology transfer.

China Briefing | Chinese must live with a dead Baidu, as Google’s return looks doomed

As Trump teases us with a breakthrough in his US-China trade war talks with Xi Jinping, markets breathe a sigh of relief But any deal looks unlikely to break down that biggest barrier to China’s digital economy: the Great Firewall

As Trump teases us with a breakthrough in his US-China trade war talks with Xi Jinping, markets breathe a sigh of relief

But any deal looks unlikely to break down that biggest barrier to China’s digital economy: the Great Firewall