Google co-founder Sergey Brin urged the US administration to make the censorship row between China and the Internet giant a “high priority”, in an interview published on Wednesday.
Brin said human rights issues should be given “equal time” with trade concerns in comments published by British newspaper The Guardian.
China has attacked Google for stopping censorship of its Chinese-language search engine but said there should be no broader fall-out in Sino-US ties provided the issue is not politicised in the US.
Google said Monday it would no longer filter results on China-based Google.cn and was redirecting mainland Chinese users to an uncensored site in Hong Kong – effectively closing down the mainland site.
Brin urged pressure from government and businesses on Beijing over the row. Chronology: Google’s operations in China
“I certainly hope they make it a high priority,” he told the paper.
“Human rights issues deserve equal time to the trade issues that are high priority now — I hope this gets taken seriously.”
He added that issues of trade and censorship were closely linked. Washington has made clear it values its economic relationship with China and stresses trade between the two leading economies has soared in the last few decades.
“Since services and information are our most successful exports, if regulations in China effectively prevent us from being competitive, then they are a trade barrier,” Brin said.
He also accused Google’s arch-rival Microsoft of exploiting the row to score points against his firm.
“I’m very disappointed for them in particular,” he said. “As I understand, they have effectively no market share — so they essentially spoke against freedom of speech and human rights simply in order to contradict Google.”
