I’ve written about China’s censorship of the Internet before, so I didn’t have much to say that’s new about the brewing dispute between the U.S. and China over the cyberspace attacks that Google recently went public with. However as everyone knows, if Google does pull out of China, the company that stands to gain the most would be Baidu.com, China’s dominant search engine with more than 60 percent of the market. Baidu.com’s shares have duly shot up on the news of Google’s possible withdrawal.

Being a home-grown Chinese company, Baidu of course has absolutely no qualms about enforcing any of the country’s censorship edicts. Since the search engine is actually accessible from anywhere in the world, it’s possible to test it for yourself to see how it filters its results. For an easy test, search for the keywords”falun gong” on Baidu.com and see what happens. Warning: don’t do this if you are actually in China or any territory controlled by China and don’t do this if you’re actually afraid of getting onto China’s hatelist.