In recent weeks, China has tightened its censorship of the    Internet, mainly directed at Google, frustrating users and    causing some international companies to leave the country.  
    Following a series of terrorist attacks, China has tightened    its Internet censorship, often called the "Great Firewall of    China," which is making it difficult for Google customers to    use the services. The crackdown has made Gmail, Google Drive,    and Google Play almost unusable, according to The New York    Times.  
    Its a frustrating and annoying drain on productivity,    Jeffrey Phillips, an American energy executive who has lived in    China for 14 years, told The New York Times. Youve got people    spending their time figuring out how to send a file instead of    getting their work done.  
    This is the latest battle in the Google-China saga. In 2010,    Google shutdown its Chinese servers to avoid Chinese    censorship. Instead, Google directed users to use its Hong Kong    services to avoid filtered results. That led the Chinese    authorities to block the Hong Kong site by making users wait 90    seconds for banned results.  
    Earlier this year, Google beganencryptingsearches,    which made it difficult for Chinese authorities to track users    searching for banned topics. In response, all Google services    were blocked on May 29.The ban has hurt Google's business    in China. In 2009, one-third of of all searches in China were    on Google. Now Google only has one-fifth of all searches.  
    Rising fears of terrorist attacks and a rising nationalism    focused at Japan and the US is causing Chinese officials to    take a harder stance on censorship. Head of the Chinese    Communist Party, President XiJinping, said he is placing    moreimportanceon Internet security and    istaking the top position in the partys to cybersecurity    group.  
    Internet security is being raised to a much higher degree,    Xiao Qiang, an expert on Chinese Internet censorship at the    University of California, Berkeley, School of Information, told    the Times. It overrides the other priorities, including    commerce or scientific research.  
    Google isn't the only company Chinese authorities have    censored.Facebook and Twitter are already banned in    China, and in July, anti-monopoly investigators raided four    Microsoft offices, interrogating managers and copying large    amounts of data onto hard drives.  
    Businesses aren't the only ones effected by the crackdown,    reports the Times. Many academics are saying censorship is    hurting their ability to conduct research.Jin Hetian, an    archaeologist in Beijing, said he had a hard time conducting    research using the available search engines, such as the    Chinese search engineBaidu.  
    I know some foreign scientists are studying the rings of    ancient trees to learn about the climate, for example, but I    cant find their work using Baidu, Ms. Jin told the Times.    When in China, Im almost never able to access Google Scholar,    so Im left badly informed of the latest findings.  
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China tightens censorship on Google