About Time Somebody Stood up to China

I have long been quite critical of Western nations' unwillingness to stand up to China.  Whether it's currency manipulation, domestic human rights abuses, providing diplomatic and financial support for brutal regimes, environmental degradation, domestic political repression, or an unwillingess to back tougher sanctions on Iran at the UN Security Council, no one seems willing to make any meaningful statements backed up by any action.  To be honest, I am not sure what exactly I looking for, but the lack of backbone that Western countries have displayed in their dealings with China has been cause for shame.

Well finally somebody has had enough of China's shenanigans.  In January, Google reported that they had been the target of a cyber-attack which targeted primarily the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.  Unsurprisingly, China flatly denied the claims.  After negotiations failed (what exactly were they negotiating?), Google decided enough was enough and announced that, with the intention of providing Chinese users with uncensored search results (something they could not provide at Google.cn), they were redirecting visitors to Google.cn to the uncensored Google.com.hk (Google's Hong Kong based site).  This strikes me as a major loss of face for China and I am sure that they Chinese government will be doing everything they can from this point forward to make Google's operations a nightmare.  I however, applaud Google for standing up to China, and it appears that Google is not alone.  GoDaddy has also recently announced that, in response to cyber-attacks launched from China, they will no longer be registering new domain names in China.  Anyone arguing that the timing of this announcement is merely coincidental has a tough sell.  It seems quite likely that this is a statement of solidarity with Google.  Here's to hoping that other firms follow suit, perhaps forcing China to think twice before applying their usual bull tactics.