Googles China partner says re-evaluation

china's major web portal sina.com said thursday it was re-evaluating cooperation with u.s. internet search giant google, but not because of political pressure.

an officer in charge of public relations at sina made the remarks in response to recent foreign media reports that google's partners in the chinese mainland were facing political pressure to abandon the search engine after it rerouted chinese-language search services to hong kong.

the officer told xinhua on condition of anonymity that they were rethinking the relationship because google was apparently not meeting sina's standards for foreign partners.

"all partners of sina must abide by chinese laws and regulations as well as have long-term plans to operate in china," the officer said.

google's withdrawal to hong kong came on march 23, more than two months after it voiced dissatisfactions over censoring search results in the chinese mainland and intentions to leave the market.