Google may have to pay price for hacking allegations: China newspaper

U.S. Internet search giant Google has become a political tool denigrating the Chinese government, said an official Beijing newspaper on Monday. The newspaper warned Google that its statements about hacking attacks traced to China could hurt its business, Reuters reported.

Google should not become overly embroiled in international political struggle, playing the role of a tool for political contention, the overseas edition of the People's Daily, the leading newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party, said.

The newspaper warned the company against playing a risky political game, indicating that political tensions between the United States and China over Internet security could hang back.

Last week, Google blamed China of trying to hack the accounts of hundreds of Google email account holders, including U.S. government officials, Chinese human rights advocates and journalists. However, the Chinese Foreign Ministry declined those allegations.

The newspaper said in a front-page commentary that Google, saying that Chinese human rights activists were among the targets of the hacking, was deliberately pandering to negative Western perceptions of China, and strongly hinting that the hacking attacks were the work of the Chinese government.

Google should not become overly embroiled in international political struggle, playing the role of a tool for political contention, the paper added. According to it, when the international winds shift direction, it may become sacrificed to politics and will be spurned by the marketplace. However, it didn't specify how Google's business could be hurt, Reuters reported.

Last year, the Obama administration took up Google's complaints about hacking and censorship from China. After that dispute, Google partly pulled out of China, and as a result, it has lost more share to rival Baidu in China's Internet market.