Experts, foreign businesses say local rules should be respected

BEIJING: Google's move to stop filtering its search results for Chinese mainland users set a bad example which broke the rule that a foreign company should abide by its host country's laws, experts and business people said Tuesday.

Google announced early Tuesday morning it had stopped censoring its Chinese-language search engine Google.cn and was redirecting Chinese mainland users to a site in Hong Kong.

It was a basic international code for commerce for foreign businesses to observe the laws and regulations of their host countries, said Wang Xiaoguang, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Governance.

"A transnational company would likely find some disaccord locally. The appropriate solution would be abiding by rules of the host country and finding way out through calm discussions," Wang said.

Dr Mei Xinyu with the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation under the Ministry of Commerce said Google's withdrawal was a politicized behavior.

Some foreign-funded companies on the Chinese mainland considered that they could draw a lesson from Google.

Sean Tzou, CEO with the US-funded Trina Solar Limited in eastern China's Jiangsu province, told Xinhua Tuesday that the most important thing for a foreign-funded company in China was to adapt itself to the local market, and its bottom line should be observing laws and regulations of the host country.

"That is the only way for us to find a win-win solution," said Tzou.

Romano Valussi, president of Alcatel-Lucent China, said he believed that only when a foreign-funded company abided by the host country's rules, could sustainable development of its business and society be achieved.

Over the past 20 years, the abundant human resources, perfect supply system, rich manufacturing experience and powerful government support in China strongly promoted the company's development on a global term, according to Valussi.

The experts and executives disagreed that Google's exit symbolized worsened investment environment in China.

By the end of 2009, China had attracted nearly $1 trillion in foreign capital and approved establishment of more than 660,000 overseas-funded companies. A total of 480 out of the Fortune 500s had set footholds in China.

According to Wang Yu with the industrial economy department under Nanjing University, Google's withdrawal only involved its search engine business, which had remained weak on the territory.

China was the biggest market for cell-phone-targeted Android system developed by Google, so it would not take the risk of withdrawing from the mainland, which was the largest cell phone market in the world, Wang Yu said.

The Chinese government also demands Chinese companies that have investment abroad to observe host countries' laws and regulations.

Premier Wen Jiabao told overseas participants to the China Development Forum 2010, which was held in Beijing from March 20 to 22, that China was willing to enhance cooperation with enterprises of advanced technologies from all over the world.

"The Chinese government will create opportunities for you, and ask you not to lose the opportunities," Wen said.

(Source: China Daily)