Updated, 5:54 a.m. | A man in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen has sued his Internet service provider over his inability to access Google’s online services, which have been largely inaccessible since the beginning of this summer.
The lawsuit against China Unicom has highlighted the continuing difficulties faced by the American Internet giant in China.
The users of products like Google’s search and Gmail have long had difficulties accessing those services in China. But the Chinese authorities began a near complete block on most of the company’s online
products in late May, ahead of the 25th anniversary of the military crackdown on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, a move intended to control the flow of online information during the politically sensitive period.
Wang Long, a 26-year-old legal worker and activist in Shenzhen, said he brought the suit in July because he was unable to access products including Google Maps, Translate, Calendar and Scholar.
While many friends told him he was unlikely to win a case over state-directed censorship policies, Mr. Wang says that regardless of the outcome, the effort will draw attention to the restrictions and encourage others in China to push for greater access to online services.
“I think the most important meaning is that through the process of this lawsuit, citizens, particularly the vast numbers of people online, will receive a message that rights are something you have to fight for,” he said.
Mr. Wang said that during a hearing on Thursday, when a judge asked about the access problems, an attorney for China Unicom bashfully said he wasn’t certain if he could say anything, evoking laughter from supporters of Mr. Wang’s in attendance.
A Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for China Unicom, one of the country’s largest state-owned telecommunications providers, said the company had no comment on the case.
Mr. Wang said he expected a decision from the court, in Shenzhen’s Futian District, later this month.
Google says it has experienced disruptions on all of its products in China since May 31. “We’ve checked extensively and there’s nothing technically wrong on our end,” said Taj Meadows, a Singapore-based Google spokesman.
In January 2010 the company announced that it was ending a four-year experiment of operating a search engine, Google.cn, that complied with Chinese censorship requirements. It later began directing search queries from mainland China to an uncensored site in Hong Kong.
But users still experienced problems while searching from mainland China and would find access to the Hong Kong site cut off by China’s system of online controls when searching for sensitive terms. The blockage that began in late May means that people who want to use Google services from mainland China are dependent on virtual private networks, mirroring sites or other workarounds.
Chinese Internet users have sued over online restrictions before, with limited results. In 2007 a Shanghai tech worker, Du Dongjin, sued China Telecom because his personal website was blocked. He lost in court but the block on his site, which marketed financial software, was later lifted.