The Xinhua News Agency, China’s main government news agency, launched its own Internet search site Tuesday.

The search engine, Panguso, is operating with China Mobile Ltd., another state-owned company and the world’s largest phone carrier by subscribers. The site will offer a state-approved version of the Internet in the wake of Google’s closure of its China-based search engine last year.

Xinhua president Li Congjun said in a statement released by the agency, “We would like to fully exploit the advantage of Xinhua as an official agency having a large collection of news and information, and that of China Mobile in terms of technology, advanced operation principles and strong infrastructure.”

According to an Associated Press report, Panguso may filter even more stringently than other Chinese sites.

Searches on Panguso turned up no results for Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo, and searches for the Dalai Lama turned up only tourism sites and criticisms of the exiled Tibetan leader from state media. Similar searches on Baidu turned up criticism of Liu Xiaobo.

The site also has potentially embarrassing gaps in its search, having returned no results for the Web site of the People’s University in Beijing.

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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2011/02/chinas_government_news_service.html