JFK once remarked that the Chinese symbol for disaster also contained the stroke for ’opportunity’. This is an interesting and profound observation on Chinese commercial acumen and their resilient determination.

A few days after the news that Google.cn (not Google.com) is to withdraw from its complex pact with the Chinese government, most Chinese folk are hardly in tears. One major interested group is for the middle-income home traders that often study the up and downs of the mainland Chinese stocks markets.

One such is Chin, a 27-year-old translator married to a Canadian here in Nanchang, she has two apartments and skis in Hokkaido, Japan on her rare vacations. On hearing the news of Google’s semi-pull out she logged into her personal trading account at home, and studying the small number of big internet engine providers here, proceeded to buy stock 50,000 rmb (500 pounds) in Google’s smaller Chinese competitors - Soguo and 10 cent. This has already begun to pay dividends today.

News that a US company is once again withdrawing is no skin off the average Chinese economic statistic. On the grounds that‘s it on the basis of infringements by the national government on human rights activists makes it interesting to many China observers, maybe a new morality entering the .com game.

Considering that American companies not too far from Google installed a lot of China’s censorship capability is another story.

The Chinese have been unhappy with Google’s content for a number of years now, which raises the question were they pushed out and like a tantrum taking child through the ‘human right’ issue in the face of the old commissars up in Beijing.

The answer is no doubt inbetween.

Baidu, an overly commercial (for my taste) home grown engine has 60 percent of the users here, Google had around 30 percent, not too bad but they were hardly world beaters in the frenzied make or break world of Chinese internet giants.

The Government fundamentally wants control of the internet, because for the young up and coming population of modern China, the internet plays a central role in many areas of their lives. Internet addiction is not new of course but in China it’d be a mildly acceptable malady among the general populous. In a vast transitory upgrading country in the midst of a mass mobilisation of its resources and labour the internet is a lifeline to communicate and spend leisure time with ease in a demanding environment.

And the young are expressing themselves in such a way that many westerners have observed that society appears to be going through some counter-cultural stage like the late 1960’s in the west. A lot of things on the internet are worrying to the government and nothing is more liberating to a nation’s youth than full expression of themselves.

One example is the commercial counterfeiting of high-end electrical goods, by graduate technicians who find factories to produce they own versions of high tech 3G and other phones. This is a form of commercial rebellion like the omnipotent hacking here, that the young are empowering themselves in new and potentially provocative ways.