Wow. This whole Google and China censorship thing isn’t as bad as I once thought. Well, at least I think so, anyway. I’m still troubled with the censorship, but Google VP Elliot Schrage gave testimony last week before the Committee on International Relations of the U.S. House of Representatives that I’ve found interesting.

Crucial to this analysis is the fact that our new Google.cn website is an additional service, not a replacement for Google.com in China. The Chinese-language Google.com will remain open, unfiltered and available to all Internet users worldwide.

Then I read some demographics provided in the testimony:

The backdrop to Google’s decision to launch Google.cn is the explosive growth of the Internet in China. To put it simply, the Internet is transforming China for the better. And the weight of the evidence suggests that the Internet is accelerating and deepening these positive trends, even in an imperfect environment.

Viewed broadly, information and communication technology – including the Internet, email, instant messaging, web logs, bulletin boards, podcasts, peer-to-peer applications, streaming audio and video, mobile telephones, SMS text messages, MMS photo-sharing, and so on – has brought Chinese citizens a greater ability to read, discuss, publish and communicate about a wider range of topics, events, and issues than ever before.

There are currently more than 105 million Internet users in China. Nearly half of them have access to broadband connections – an increase of 41% since 2003. Even so, Internet deployment in China is at a very early stage, reaching only about 8% of the population. Among those under 24 years of age, more than 80% are Internet users. By 2010, China will have more than 250 million Internet users. And already, there are more than 350 million mobile phones, a number growing by roughly 57 million annually.

Whoa! Then today Steve Rubel pointed to a report from a career consulting firm in China that said:

…among white-collar workers in China’s four largest cities - Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen - 52% responded they already had a blog, while another 28% said they plan to begin a blog in the near future.[…]

Unlike western bloggers who often focus on news and politics, the Chinese white collar bloggers see complaining alongside office and personal gossip as their priorities, according to the survey.

So my question is now…what is our responsibility and opportunity?

[tags]china, google, censorship, china blogs, google.cn, china internet demographics[/tags]