The US web giant, embroiled in a row with Beijing over state censorship, is awaiting word that its Internet Content Provider licence -- vital to its operations in a country with more than 400 million web users -- is still valid.

Google China spokeswoman Marsha Wang, who said the company was still awaiting a final decision, explained that its ICP licence remains valid as long as the government has not expressly rejected it.

"The licence runs till 2012. The licence needs to be checked every year," Wang told AFP.

"Everything will be as usual if the company passes the check," she said, however adding that the government could opt to cancel the licence ahead of the 2012 deadline.

"We have not received any information that it is invalid now," Wang said.

An official with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the main regulator of China's Internet industry, told AFP that Google's application was still under consideration.

"We need time to review because they submitted the documents quite late," said the official, who asked not to be named. He added that he could not say when a reply could be expected.

Google said last week that it would stop automatically redirecting Chinese users to an unfiltered site in Hong Kong, a process it began in March in response to state censorship and cyberattacks it claims came from China.

All mainland users are now directed to a new landing page on google.cn, which links to the Hong Kong site.

"It's clear from conversations we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable -- and that if we continue redirecting users, our Internet Content Provider licence will not be renewed," Google's chief legal officer David Drummond said on the company's official blog.

"Without an ICP licence, we can't operate a commercial website like google.cn -- so Google would effectively go dark in China," he said.

"This new approach is consistent with our commitment not to self-censor and, we believe, with local law."

A web page maintained by Google on the accessibility to its services in mainland China, google.com/prc/report.html, on Wednesday listed its web search service as "partially blocked" for the past week.

AFP attempts on Wednesday to use the Google Suggest function, which provides users with suggested words as a they type a query into the Google search box, in mainland China were unsuccessful.

earlier related report
China tells dissident writer book on PM could mean prison
Beijing (AFP) July 7, 2010 - China's secret police have warned a dissident writer that he could end up in prison if he goes ahead with the publication of a book critical of Premier Wen Jiabao, the author told AFP on Wednesday.

Yu Jie, a 36-year-old whose books have been banned on the mainland since 2004 but are widely available in Hong Kong, said he was interrogated for four and a half hours on Monday in Beijing by state security agents.

He said the agents discovered his plans to publish his latest book, "Wen Jiabao: China's Best Actor" in the former British colony via his posts on the popular microblogging site Twitter -- which is blocked by Chinese authorities.

"They asked me questions about the contents of the book, and their main objective was to threaten me in order to prevent me from writing and publishing my works," Yu said.

His interrogators said Wen, as one of China's top leaders, was not "a normal citizen" and thus a book criticising him could have "grave consequences" as it would endanger "the ruling power and the interests of the nation," Yu said.

"They told me it would be the makings of a serious criminal dossier that would see me sent to prison like Liu Xiaobo," he said.

Liu, a writer and former professor, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December on subversion charges, a year after he co-authored "Charter 08", a bold manifesto calling for political reform in China.

His sentence was upheld on appeal in February.

Yu nevertheless said he planned to publish his book on Wen "within three months".

He said while the premier -- sometimes referred to as "Grandpa Wen" because of his down-to-earth interactions with the public -- had a generally good public image at home and abroad, he is opposed to any political reform.

Wen also has worked to boost the power of the secret police, Yu said.

The author -- who is married, the father of a young child and a convert to Christianity -- said he was also questioned about several articles he published on foreign websites in recent months.

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