Is China Redirecting U.S. Search Requests?

There have been some mixed reports coming from various blogs today reporting that the "Great Firewall of China," owned by the government, has been redirecting attempts by Chinese users to access American Web sites such as Yahoo! and Google. The target? Baidu.

So far, we have not seen anything definitive, nor has there been a consensus of opinion whether this is actually happening. Posters responding to this TechCrunch article as well as this Google Blogoscoped forum seem to indicate that many users are getting through, with YouTube being listed as one of the exceptions.

Baidu is traded on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Say what you want about Google's stock price, but Baidu's share price keeps increasing--it's at a lofty $320 per share as of this writing, almost quadrupling its value in a year. If its revenue (and as a result, its share price) has been in effect manipulated by a foreign government, however, I would think the International Trade Commission (the independent, quasijudicial federal agency that advises the government on matters of trade) might get involved, as well as the U.S. government itself.