"As many as 81 percent of those polled are opposed to Chinese government accepting Google's demands."<p>Having been to China myself, this result does not seem doctored.  One argument often made is that censorship as necessary to keep people in order, and particularly necessary in China due to the population.  The Western doctrine of freedom of speech, as the argument goes, has little applicability in a country with over 4 times the population.<p>Revolts and rebellions are also often seen in a much more negative light in China.  Here in the west, they have resulted in many very positive changes, and are widely-regarded as being sometimes necessary to growth, and a way to keep the government in check.<p>Many of the Chinese I've met are also fiercely patriotic.  "Why should our country cave into demands of a foreign company?"<p>Obviously, I'm generalizing here, and from a small sample size too.  This is just my personal experience from the people I met and spent time with there, and opinions held by more highly-educated people often did not follow this trend and tended to be more critical of the government.<p>Note that this is a regurgitation of some common arguments I heard- absolutely not my personal view.<p>But they do have one point: Why do we care so much about Chinese censorship, as long as it is only affecting people within China?