Chinese Company Helps Thwart Communist Censorship

A company in China has created a browser called Maxthon that allows users to visit websites through their proxy server, and thereby avoid China’s aggressive censorship policies. The tiny Beijing company (also named Maxthon, has attracted millions of users in China for functionality that can circumvent government controls on information in search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Baidu.com.

Here is an example. Do a search for the word Tienanmen at www.google.com (Here’s a link). The first results you see are about the Tienanmen Square Massacre where Chine ran over protesting students with tanks.

Now do the same search through the Google’s China search engine (Here’s a link). Note that the images of tanks are missing and the summaries of the top results have to do with vacationing and travel – not a protest.

Anyone who remembers the incident would also remember that to this day China officially declares that no one was ever run over with a tank in Tiananmen Square. It never happened as far as the Chinese government is concerned.

This is exactly what this small company is trying to circumvent. What is not entirely clear to me is why would a country who would run students over with tanks to silence them would allow a Beijing-based start up company to do this… Time will tell I suppose.