Hong Kong: Hong Kong's leader announced on Tuesday that he would lobby Google to show China's national anthem as the top result when people search for the city's anthem instead of a protest song.
Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee made the comments in response to several major sporting events, such as a rugby match in South Korea and a powerlifting competition in Dubai, where the pro-democracy protest song "Glory to Hong Kong" replaced the Chinese national anthem, "March Of the Volunteers" was played instead.
"There are ways to do this," Lee said at a briefing. It depends on how responsibly a company behaves and how much it respects the importance of the national anthem in a larger context. He promised to push Google to change that.
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Lee's comments come a day after the city's security chief, Chris Tang, claimed that a request to display the Chinese national anthem instead of the "Glory to Hong Kong" protest song as the top search result was rejected by Google .
Google reportedly said that such results were generated by an algorithm and that human input was not required in Tang's account.
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2019 saw months of anti-government protests, during which "Glory to Hong Kong" grew in popularity. Following the passage of a national security law that severely restricts political dissent, it is now widely considered prohibited.
Authorities claim that the song's lyrics, which include the famous protest slogan "Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times", violate national security law because they are separatist and subversive.
Hong Kong is a former British colony that is now a semi-autonomous part of China with its own legal system and customs territory. After the city was transferred to Beijing's control in 1997, Chinese leaders promised to respect its civil liberties and way of life for at least 50 years.
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But in recent years, the communist-run mainland has increased its influence in the region by imprisoning pro-democracy activists and cracking down on demonstrations.