WASHINGTON—The Trump administration took aim at Google on Thursday, calling on the tech giant to halt development of a project it said would accelerate censorship efforts in China.
In a speech that outlined the White House’s long list of frustrations and grievances with Beijing, Vice President Mike Pence called on companies to reconsider business practices in the world’s second-largest economy that involve turning over intellectual property or “abetting Beijing’s oppression.”
“For example, Google should immediately end development of the Dragonfly app that will strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers,” Mr. Pence said in his speech at the Hudson Institute, a conservative, Washington-based think tank focused on security and economic issues.
As part of a project dubbed “Dragonfly,” Google is testing a mobile version of its search engine that would adhere to China’s strict censors. While the project has drawn pointed questions from a bipartisan group of senators, Mr. Pence’s speech was the first public condemnation from the White House.
A spokeswoman for Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., declined to comment on Mr. Pence’s speech and instead referred to a previous statement that described the company’s work as exploratory and “not close to launching a search product in China.”
Mr. Pence’s speech was the latest signal from the White House that the warm relations between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping haven’t trickled down through the ranks of the administration. President Trump accused China of election meddling last week, trade tensions have been escalating between the two countries for months, and disputes continue over military cooperation, espionage and territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Mr. Pence said that China is working to remove Mr. Trump from office, describing a broad effort to influence political opinion and manipulation of academic institutions and U.S. companies.
He repeated Mr. Trump’s warning that U.S. tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports could increase, and vowed that the White House would “stand strong” to support national security. Otherwise, he didn’t describe any new actions the administration will take against China, opting instead to sketch an ominous portrait of a country seeking to expand its global influence.
Beijing, Mr. Pence said, “is also taking steps to exploit its economic leverage, and the allure of China’s large domestic market, to advance its influence over American corporations.”
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He said Delta Air Lines was forced to apologize for not identifying Taiwan as a “province of China” and said Marriott was pressured to fire a U.S. employee who used an official company account to “like” a post on Twitter from a Tibetan separatist group.
Mr. Pence criticized Chinese censors who object to criticism “even in minor ways,” pointing to the 2012 remake of the iconic 1984 movie “Red Dawn” that was digitally edited to portray North Korea as the villain, instead of China.https://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/11/24/how-red-dawn-could-have-been-remade-without-the-xenophobia/
He also accused China of seeking to “foster a culture of censorship” in academia. He cited a speech from Yang Shuping, a Chinese student at University of Maryland, who became a target of criticism in China after praising the “fresh air of free speech” in America.
Mr. Pence said Ms. Yang became the “victim of a firestorm of criticism” on China’s tightly controlled social media, and her family back home was harassed.
He said that the Hudson Institute was the target of a suspected cyberattack from Shanghai after it hosted an event with Guo Wengui, a fugitive Chinese businessman and political dissident who has alleged corruption within China’s leadership.
“You know better than most that the Chinese Communist Party is trying to undermine academic freedom and the freedom of speech in America today,” Mr. Pence told the group.
Write to Michael C. Bender at Mike.Bender@wsj.com
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