If you’ve been watching the news today, you’ve probably gotten a good dose of a masterful propaganda campaign, as Google spins its recent retreat from the Chinese market. Other foreign companies get “cheated” and “close up shop” in China because of poor numbers, but Google “threatens to exit” after an “attack”, issuing a “challenge” to the Chinese government. Bravo, Google: even in the area of PR spin, you always manage to give something new.

A careful look at the situation, however, suggests that Google’s motivation is more linked to dollar signs than human rights concerns. Google’s failure to gain a foothold in the Chinese market ranks as one of the company’s largest scars on its balance book. This is largely due to Chinese government protectionism and tinkering, which blocked Google in the early boom days of the Chinese internet while Baidu, the now-dominant search engine, got off the ground and established itself as a the dominant brand. When, in 2005, Google negotiated to accept government censorship, they did so in the expectation that this apparent compromise to their “Don’t be evil” motto would be returned in Chinese market share. That didn’t pan out to be true: so far the most Google has managed to grab of Chinese searching market-share has been 29%, roughly the inverse of their share in the US market (66%). In a country where credit cards and online retail are weak while barriers to foreign business stand strong, Google China likely hemorrhaging money.

To say that Google’s failure is due to government hindrance, however, is only part of the story. Google, like many failed foreign ventures before it, suffered from an uncharacteristic inability to anticipate and meet local Chinese tastes. As Baidu innovated the ways that Chinese people searched for the content they desired Google dallied in bringing new products–even ones it had introduced already in the U.S.–to the Chinese-language search engine. This wasn’t due to Google’s scruples about the obviously illegal nature of most of the content Baidu was leading searchers to (often pirated versions of copyrighted books, music, and movies), either–Google recently apologized to Chinese authors for making their books available online without their permission and is facing legal action for infringing copyrights in Shanghai.

Which is the heart of Google’s problem: as a foreign entity, Google gets treated differently in China. Unlike in the U.S., where Google’s perceived infractions are often given a pass (as the long delays in bringing anti-trust inquiries against them might testify to), in China Google is often a whipping boy for things the Chinese wish not to deal with. While Baidu can be quietly informed that they should be censoring certain keywords, Google is blocked from China until they make a public declaration of compliance. Hundreds of websites post popular Chinese novels in their entirety with impunity, but Google has to go to court to defend posting limited presentations of them. Baidu is able to establish their own version of Wikipedia, while the original Wikipedia–the bread and butter of Google search query returns–is repeatedly blocked.

This latest move by Google is certainly calculated. Chinese cyber attacks are nothing new in the United States and, legally, fall under the purvue of the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI–if Google was looking for simple recourse to the attacks, withdrawing from China is not their only option (and will not, it is relevant to note to the non-web savvy, do anything to protect against further attacks in the future). Further, there’s no current evidence that the attacks originated with the Chinese government and, given the ambiguity that usually surrounds these sorts of hacks, proving as much would be extremely difficult. Google’s announcement has ulterior motives.

Instead, it seems that Google has found a new tactic to the problem of being a non-starter in the Chinese market: either China, seeking to avoid embarrassment, makes some concessions to Google on this issue (synonymous, in China, with a certain acknowledgment of standing and power by the state), or Google withdraws and obscures their poor success in China with an issue of principle. In this latter case, Google can preserve their do-no-wrong, golden boy status in the tech world by labeling their attempts in China as matters of corporate culture and moral scruples, instead of as a their largest business mistake. That this action burnishes the brass on Google’s ambitious corporate motto, notably tainted by agreeing to censorship in China in the first place, is icing on the cake.

So, yes: the Chinese government could learn much about propaganda from Google.

Let’s hope that they don’t.