Since 2006, Google has complied with Chinese demands to censor its internet search results at Google.cn, as well as many other things (namely Youtube), but Tuesday Google announced that it had "detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on [its] corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google." According to Google's Tuesday post, the implications are that it was much more than a simple hack:

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses—including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors—have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

In the same post, Google threatened to remove its business from China, and stated that, in the least, it will discontinue censoring content on Google.cn:

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered—combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web—have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Since Tuesday's announcement, shares of Baidu (China's government-controlled search engine) show gains, the White House has come out in support of Google, and people are wondering if Microsoft/Yahoo will follow suit. All of this supports one assertion that no one can deny any longer: Google is a world superpower in its on right. It is a political entity as well as an economic one, with the clout to potentially will China—one of the world's greatest economic superpowers—into submission. Or, as Roger Cohen put it in his excellent New York Times Op-Ed: "[T]he behemoth of global connectedness and the behemoth of global growth confront each other."

Part of Cohen's analysis:

Nobody here can be surprised that China has been trying to hack into the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, among other cyberattacks. That’s consistent with the prevailing mood. Google is on the money when it says China is a great nation behind much of the world’s growth today but that its actions go “to the heart of a much bigger global debate about freedom of speech.”

I don’t think China can forever ride globalization, its development stallion, and deny its very essence: open systems.