Google said on Tuesday that it was making a final attempt to retain a presence in mainland China after the Beijing government threatened to close its operations in the country at the end of this month. The US search engine said that the Chinese government wanted to stop its practice of automatically redirecting users in mainland China to its Hong Kong site – an arrangement that has allowed Google to avoid self-censoring its search engine in order to meet Beijing’s strict internet regulations. Ben McLannahan analyses the search giant’s latest strategy in China.