The State Department cable referred to last week in reports as alleging that the Chinese Politburo ordered the attacks on Google a year ago has been released.

The actual text of the cable is available from the Guardian, a UK paper. The relevant excerpt follows:

XXXXXXXXXXXX told PolOff that the closely held Chinese government operations against Google had been coordinated out of the State Council Information Office XXXXXXXXXXXX It was not until Google’s public announcement of the intrusions into its systems that the issue had been discussed more widely within the Party. (Note: It is unclear whether President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao were aware of these actions before Google’s going public.) As a result of Google’s announcement, the PBSC had taken up the issue of Internet controls and the Google case in a series of meetings (reftel). XXXXXXXXXXXX stated that PRC operations against Google were “one hundred percent” political in nature and had nothing to do with removing Google, with its minority market share, as a competitor to Chinese search engines. Separately, XXXXXXXXXXXX told ECON MinCouns that he believed PBSC member XXXXXXXXXXXX was working actively with Chinese Internet search giant Baidu against Google’s interests in China.

XXXXXXXXXXXX is the redacted name of the source. It appears that Wikileaks redacted it. The State Council Information Office is not exactly, as the New York Times reports, the Politburo. The Office describes itself, on their own site china.org.cn, as:

…the State Council’s office equivalent to the Publicity Department which reports to the Party Central Committee. While not normally involved in media regulation, the Information Office of the State Council has influence on Ministry of the Information Industry (MII), the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) in addition to its propaganda role.

The cable covers related topics, mostly having to do with reactions in the state-controlled Chinese press to Google’s revelation of the attacks and their demand at the time not to perform censorship anymore. The Chinese press reactions, unsurprisingly, defended government regulations and accused the US government of collusion with Google and other US companies and of hypocrisy.

– on Security Watch

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