Risk and reward: the real cost of doing business in China

This week Google shut down its search operations in mainland China. Now Chinese Googlers are getting sent to a Hong Kong domain, but it’s unclear how much longer that will last. So why did the search giant pull out of a country that seems to represent so much economic opportunity for other multinational corporations? New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Brookings Institution analyst Kenneth Lieberthal try to answer.

Nicholas Kristof is a two time Pulitzer Prize winner and columnist. Kenneth Lieberthal is senior fellow and director of the John L Thorton China Center at Brookings. They say that Google’s decision, though brave, is unlikely to be repeated by other multinational corporations in the same position.