China's censorship is a 'trade issue'

Nicole Wong from Google told the Senate Judiciary Committee that web censorship could favour local companies.The US is considering to raise China's censorship with the World Trade Organisation, according to Bloomberg.Google is reviewing its operations in China following hacking attacks that targeted the Google accounts of political activists.

At the start of this year, Google said it was no longer willing to censor the Chinese language version of its search engine. When Google launched google.cn in 2006, it agreed to censor some search results - such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Tibetan independence or religious group Falun Gong - as required by the Chinese government.