If Google produced iron ore as well as providing an internet search engine, it really would have been conflicted. Even as it was, the decision to “pull out” of China (all the way to Hong Kong) was finely balanced. Google decided that its brand, which depends on its image as a champion of liberalism, was worth more than a slice of China's still-nascent online advertising market. That judgment became easier as Beijing grew more heavy-handed in policing the internet and as Chinese hackers – with or without the authorities' blessing – grew more adept at tunnelling into Google's databases.

But Google has hedged its bets. For the moment, it will retain a research and development presence, as well as a sales team, in the mainland. By taking advantage of the “one-country, two-server” system – an unintended relic of British colonialism – it is hoping to have its cookie and eat it too. Chinese users who log on to Google.cn will automatically be diverted to an uncensored site in Hong Kong. Google has thus fulfilled its pledge of “doing no evil”. If Beijing wants to play the baddie by blocking some search results – and earlier this week it was doing so with heavy-booted abandon – so be it.

Google's decision has presented Chinese authorities with a quandary. Some officials have sensibly sought to characterise the pull-out as a purely commercial decision of little broader significance. To escalate the affair risks jeopardising China's official stance of being welcoming to business and further poisoning already strained relations with the US. More, to paint the withdrawal in ideological hues risks putting Beijing into conflict with a subset of its own netizens who are embarrassed that a great company such as Google cannot operate freely in a great country such as China.

But other Chinese officials have sought to portray Google as a proxy for a hostile US government and accusing the Silicon Valley company of “hurting the feelings of Chinese people”. The latter accusation – normally reserved for Japanese prime ministers visiting war shrines – does not stand up to scrutiny. No country can compel foreign enterprises to invest. When my local Chinese restaurant closed down in west London, it did not occur to me to lodge a complaint with the Chinese embassy on the grounds that abandonment had traumatised the sensitive souls of Acton.

Rio Tinto's dilemma has been somewhat less agonising. Unlike Google, whose revenues from Chinese advertising account for just 1.3 per cent of the total, China is the Anglo-Australian miner's biggest customer. Some two-thirds of Rio's iron ore is gobbled up by Chinese customers, who use it to make the steel that is the backbone of China's industrialisation. But Rio, like Google, has fallen foul of Chinese laws and practice. Four China-based employees, including Australian citizen Stern Hu, were this week on trial for taking bribes and stealing commercial secrets. Their sudden arrest last July looked to many like a political reprisal after acrimonious negotiations over the iron ore price and Rio's rejection of a $19.5bn cash injection by Chinalco, China's state aluminium group. That impression was compounded by mystery surrounding the evidence against them. They originally faced much graver charges of stealing state secrets, a crime punishable by death.

The arrests prompted dark talk of a breakdown in China's relations with Rio – and even with Australia. That has not transpired. Trade and investment between the countries is booming. If anything, Rio has stepped up business with China, this month resurrecting a plan to team up with Chinalco to exploit iron ore reserves in Guinea. Its decision to carry on with business as usual may have been helped by Mr Hu's admission in court this week that he took bribes. Both sides can now present the affair as a straightforward case of individual wrongdoing. Yet even without that confession – as yet to be properly verified in open court – the Anglo-Australian miner had little option but to cosy up to Beijing. On the very day the four Rio executives were standing trial in Shanghai, Tom Albanese, Rio's chief executive, was paying homage to China's leaders in Beijing's Great Hall of the People. The symbolism could hardly have been clearer.