BEIJING -- The Chinese government appeared Tuesday to set the foundation for Internet giant Google to pull out of China, with one spokesman contending that the company's potential departure would be an "individual business act" and another warning Google to obey Chinese law, whether it leaves China or not.

The comments -- by the spokesmen for the Foreign Affairs and Commerce ministries -- followed strong indications that Google, which has been locked in a dispute with the Chinese government over censorship, was preparing to leave China.

Chinese online advertisers are advising their clients to switch their accounts to Google's Chinese competitor, Baidu. And government officials from several ministries have privately predicted that Google soon would shut down its operations.

In January, Google announced that it would stop censoring its web searches in China, in violation of Chinese government regulations. Google started operations in China in 2006 and has been censoring search results ever since.

China routinely blocks Internet content, shutting off access to sites such as Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. Negotiations have occurred between Google and the government on how to resolve the impasse, but apparently no progress has been made.

Google's plans to stop censoring searches shocked the Western business community in China, which has long avoided publicly confronting the Chinese government on issues like censorship, copyright infringement and corruption -- all of which bedevil Western businesses operating in the country. That said, many Western businessmen have said privately that they are rooting for Google and looked at the case as an important sign about China's future direction on questions of individual freedoms.

To that end, Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Qin Gang on Tuesday dismissed the importance of Google's possible withdrawal. "It will not undermine China's investment environment or most of the foreign companies, including U.S. companies' business in China," he contended at a news briefing in Beijing.

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