Any hope that an ever more prosperous China would slowly lead to an opening in the realm of free expression and all the consequences thereof were given a setback this week as the ruling Communist party has decided to ban the most popular search engine: Google.

The Chinese government has escalated online censorship in the past few weeks by demanding that every new PC sold in the country come equipped with censorship software. The government claims that it is to stop pornography, but it is clear the regime wants to block websites critical of it. The CCP has also hired what they call 10,000 “volunteers” to monitor the internet. An army of censors is a strong sign that China has no intention to allow even minimal criticism of the regime.

Now China is asking, rather demanding, Google ban access to overseas websites. Google is not being banned per se, just coming under strict demands as to how to run its Chinese-language website.

The Financial Times quoted an unidentified senior U.S. internet official who states that the crackdown on Google is meant to distract from China’s own domestic censorship by putting the attention on an American internet firm. China also claims that its restrictions on Google are solely for the purpose of banning access to pornography.

Part of the effort to crackdown on Google may not be based entirely on banning criticism, but out of economic motivation. Google competes in China with domestic search engine Baidu. Baidu has a market share of 59%, but Google has been gaining ground and for the first time surpassed 30% Chinese market share this year. Many analysts believe that China resents Google’s expansion at the expense of a domestic competitor and its move against Google is nothing more than a state effort to undermine a foreign firm in order to benefit a domestic one. They point to the fact that many of the content in which China is using to justify the restrictions on Google are also found on Baidu, though the latter was come under no such restrictions.

Whatever the reason, China’s actions against Google is proof that the elite running China is illiberal and that a rising China is to be met with caution.