IDG News Service - China's strict controls on its Internet usage will eventually fail as more of the country's people go online and express themselves, said Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
"Ultimately, the people will win over the government. The yearning is so strong," he said Wednesday during a talk hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations.
Schmidt's comments come several months after Google announced it would stop censoring its search results in China. But even as Google has attempted to provide unfiltered search results by redirecting users in China to the company's Hong Kong search engine, the Chinese government continues to block certain searches.
China currently has 420 million Internet users, according to Chinese government statistics. But certain sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are blocked. At the same time, China heavily invests into policing the web, using a large organization of regulators that are estimated to number from 30,000 to 50,000, Schmidt said.
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