China even fakes company letters to retain Google?

"Company CEO Eric Schmidt said last week the company plans to make its announcement "soon." Internet companies operating in China face a March 31 deadline to renew licenses to operate in the country, according to the Beijing Communications Administration.

The letter received wide coverage after it was posted earlier this week on a Web site for CCTV, a state-run media site.Meanwhile, a Chinese government Web site has removed a letter purported to be sent from 27 of Google's partner firms in China as suspicions grow whether all the companies listed authored the letter.

The letter -- supposedly signed by 27 Chinese advertising partners and addressed to John Liu, Google's top executive in China -- said they are "worried and anxious" since Google's January 13 announcement it may leave China. The partners said they were having trouble retaining staff and were worried about legal fallout from clients if Google shutters its China operations.

However, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday that 22 of the 27 companies who supposedly signed the letter had no knowledge of it. On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal had reported one anonymous source from a company on the list confirming the substance of the letter.

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/BUSINESS/03/18/china.google.report/index.htm...