Huntsman Walks Fine Line on Google
On the subject of Google Inc.’s (GOOG) complaints about cyberattacks and censorship in China, U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, in an interview this week with the American Chamber of Commerce in China, signaled his support for the upholding of “core American values,” but emphasized that corporate and state interests should remain separate.
On the surface, Huntsman took a similar stance to the Chinese government in distancing politics from Google’s commercial interests.
“Google has a commercial dispute with China. They will handle that, I am sure, through their own channels and through their own means. It’s an issue they’ll have to work out,” the ambassador told AmCham’s Josh Gartner. Later on in the interview he added: “We shouldn’t cross wires [on] what the U.S. government does and what we stand for, and what Google is endeavoring to do. Google will solve their own set of issues their own way, based on their own timeline.”
