BBC News
January 24, 2010

China has denied any state involvement in alleged cyber attacks on Google and accused the US of double standards.

A Chinese industry ministry spokesman told the state-run Xinhua news agency that claims that Beijing was behind recent cyber attacks were “groundless”.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week asked China to investigate claims by Google that it had been targeted by China-based hackers.

The US search giant has threatened to withdraw from China.

“The accusation that the Chinese government participated in [any] cyber attack, either in an explicit or inexplicit way, is groundless. We [are] firmly opposed to that,” the unnamed spokesman of China’s ministry of industry and information technology told Xinhua.

Isn’t it true that even in the United States, the homeland of Google, certain government agencies are also reported of often entering a massive number of personal e-mail accounts with certain excuses?

“China’s policy on internet safety is transparent and consistent,” he added.

Separately, China’s state-run China Daily newspaper said America’s internet strategy was “to exploit its advantages in internet funds, technology and marketing and export its politics, commerce and culture to other nations for political, commercial and cultural interests of the world’s only superpower”.

It also described the US government as being hypocritical, saying the country’s “certain government agencies” had reportedly illegally checked a massive number of personal e-mail accounts.

On Thursday, Mrs Clinton urged Beijing to investigate the alleged cyber attacks on Google.

Hillary Clinton: “We look to the Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough review”

“We look to Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of the cyber intrusions,” she said.

Mrs Clinton added that companies such as the US giant should refuse to support “politically motivated censorship”.

Again in reference to China, she said that any country which restricted free access to information risked “walling themselves off from the progress of the next century”.     more …