THE ELABORATE back and forth surrounding Google’s relationship with the Chinese government took on a new edge yesterday when the web giant said it would stop automatically directing users to an unfiltered site in Hong Kong.

It began this process in March in response to censorship and cyberattacks it claims came from China.

The new move is a sign that Google hopes to convince Beijing to renew its operating licence in the world’s largest internet market, and the shock announcement comes just one day before Google’s China licence is up for renewal.

“It’s clear from conversations we have had with Chinese government officials that they find the redirect unacceptable – and that if we continue redirecting users, our internet content provider licence will not be renewed,” Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond said on the company’s blog. “Google would effectively go dark in China.”

“Over the next few days we’ll end the redirect entirely, taking all our Chinese users to our new landing page,” he said, explaining that the new page on Google.cn links to the Hong Kong site.

Currently, users are now required to click anywhere on the Google.cn page in order to get redirected to the Google Hong Kong search site, instead of being automatically rerouted.

Three months ago, Google closed its China-based search service and began rerouting traffic to an unfiltered search site in Hong Kong, drawing comments from Beijing that raised doubts about the company’s future in China.

Google’s competitor in China is Baidu, and the market has about four hundred million internet users. It said in January it might quit the country because of censorship, following a hacking attack that it said came from China.