With Google censorship, China is tough -- on the outside

Reporting from Beijing - The ever-quotable Deng Xiaoping once said that when you open the window, flies get in.

Although the late Chinese leader hardly could have conceived three decades ago of Google, Twitter or Facebook as those troublesome pests, the sentiment remains unchanged. The Communist Party has long wrestled with how to weigh the competing dictates of economic openness and social control. How to attract international businesses without bringing in too many foreigners and their alien ideas? How to let their own people enjoy the educational opportunities of the outside world without undermining the party's ideological hold?

When there's been a clash of those interests, Beijing almost always has come down on the side of control. In that context, its unwillingness to bend to Google's demands for less censorship of the Internet was a foregone conclusion.