Google's Eric Schmidt Blasts China In New Book

Google has long had a testy relationship with China, with the search giant largely pulling out of the Chinese market after alleging that state-backed hackers had targeted the company's systems and employees.

Chairman Eric Schmidt's forthcoming book, "The New Digital Age," will not smooth things over, judging by a description of the work by the Wall Street Journal, which has reviewed galleys of the unreleased title.

"... in this all-Internet world, China, the book says again and again, is a dangerous and menacing superpower," Tom Gara writes.

Schmidt cowrote the book with Jared Cohen, a former State Department official who now runs a Google think tank.

Here's a summary of the charges Schmidt and Cohen lay against China:

The country is “the world’s most active and enthusiastic filterer of information”;

It is “the most sophisticated and prolific” entity targeting Western companies with cyberattacks;

It is willing to commit cybercrimes in pursuit of state goals, which the United States is not willing to do because of "the American sense of fair play."

Schmidt and Cohen predict, however, that the Chinese government's attempt to keep its citizenry under tight control will lead to "widespread instability" and "some kind of revolution" down the road.