Following the Google investigation of recent hacking attacks, which resulted in the discovery of potential Chinese government involvement or acceptance, the US State Department will formally protest to the Chinese Government demanding an explanation. “We will be issuing a formal demarche to the Chinese government in Beijing on this issue in the coming days,” said state department spokesperson PJ Crowley. “It will express our concern for this incident and request information from China as to an explanation of how it happened and what they plan to do about it.”

Yahoo and other US companies have also come forward with cases that potentially point back to China.

Google has already threatened to pull out of China following the hacking attempts and security violations which intruded on intellectual property rights. The hacking attempts included illegal access of human rights workers using Gmail.

Google announced that the company is no longer willing to censor its Chinese search engine – google.cn. In response to the hacking attempts, Google demanded that China allow it to operate within censorship restrictions. A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman,  Jiang Yu, asseted the internet in China was “open.” Some of the current censorship restrictions that the Chinese Government require of web operators include removing content covering: 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Tibetan independence or Falun Gong, among others.