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Jan. 21 (BBC News) - The US has called on Beijing to investigate the recent cyber attacks on Google, which have prompted the search giant to threaten to leave China.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that companies such as Google should refuse to support "politically-motivated censorship".
She also said China along with Tunisia and Uzbekistan had boosted censorship.
Google says hackers tried to infiltrate its software coding and the e-mail accounts of human rights activists.
China says the row with Google should not be linked to relations with the US.
Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister He Yafei said the rift with the web company should not be "over-interpreted", according to state news agency Xinhua.
In a speech at the Newseum journalism museum in Washington, Mrs Clinton said global "norms of behaviour" should be put in place.
"Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences and international condemnation," she said.
'Highly sophisticated'
"In an interconnected world, an attack on one nation's networks can be an attack on all."
Google said on 12 January hackers had tried to infiltrate its software coding and the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, in a "highly sophisticated" attack.
The California-based company, which launched in China in 2006, said it would quit the country unless the government relaxed censorship.
Lucrative market
On Tuesday, the Chinese government said Google and other foreign companies had to obey the country's laws and traditions.
The same day, Google said it was postponing the launch of two mobile phones in China.
When Google launched google.cn four years ago, it was criticised for agreeing to Beijing's demands to make certain search results off-limits - including those relating to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Tibetan independence or Falun Gong.
