Google Opens Asian Data Centers But Shuns China and India 75
judgecorp writes "Google has opened data centers in Singapore and Taiwan to serve the boom in Asian Internet users. But it canceled a $300 million data center project in Hong Kong to focus on the Taiwan site and the smaller one in Singapore. Officially the problem was lack of space in Hong Kong, but China's repressive attitude to the Internet (and the history of the Chinese hack on Gmail in 2010) must have contributed to the move."
Re:Doesn't shun China (Score:5, Informative)
Taiwan's political institutions are not tied to the People's Republic of China. They are remnants of the Nationalist government (KMT) after their defeat in the Civil War.
Hong Kong and Macau were both colonial outposts of Britain and Portugal respectively. These have been handled back to China and are government under a "One Country, Two Systems" approach, classifying them as Special Administrative Regions (SARs) each with a mini-constitution called the "Basic Law". In theory, a high degree of autonomy is guaranteed, but in practise, there is always political pressure being applied to intervene in all kinds of matters. A resident of the SAR has about the same rights as a person in North America or in Europe, and at least until now, the appearance normality has been maintained after the handover back to China.