Because its major competitor is suffering from blatant malicious QoS deterioration?

• Every 15 minutes, any attempt to access google is met with a reset. The blocking lasts 15 minutes, causing an artificial 50% downtime for ALL Google services.
• When the service is accessible, searching for a potentially 'inharmonious' word (including seemly innocuous false positives like 'carrot') resets the connection immediately and deny future access to Google for 5 minutes.
• Don't even THINK about using Google Search over SSL.
• G+ doesn't work. Well, neither does Facebook.
• Blog service (blogspot/blogger) doesn't work. In fact, searching for the word 'blogspot' resets the connection.
• Video service (Youtube) obviously doesn't work.
• No site managed by Google Sites works.

Oh, and I'm a native.

The Sony part will soon remedy the error with a firmware 'update'.

To understand this one must first understand Baidu (the top Chinese search engine)'s business model.

For a specific search term, the top results shown in Baidu search are paid for, which means the websites in question pay Baidu for prioritizing their sites and every time a user clicks the result (this may sound 'innovative' at first but I assure you it does more harm than good, considering putting names of random diseases in Baidu these days results in a full page of dodgy websites offering expensive (yet often ineffective) treatment courses).
To increase revenue, Baidu encourages equally dodgy 'vendors' to lead users into clicking these links by giving a small kick-back for each successful hit. The whole thing sounds like borderline fraud to me but hell somehow it's legal.

The trojan, HongTouTou (or 'Phantom Clicker'), is the result of such business model as a certain vendor tries to profit by creating artificial traffic.

This an actual URL generated by the malware: http://wap.baidu.com/s?word=%E8%9D%8E%E5%AD%90&vit=uni&from=963a_w1 (don't click or you'll be generating revenue for them.)
Notice the 'from' parameter, 963a_w1 being the vendor ID.

An in-depth analysis can be found here:
http://www.antiy.com/cn/news/android_adrd.htm
Oh, Chinese language knowledge required.

What's next? Laser Sharks?

Here goes his business model:

1, Preach on media the harm of "Internet Addiction" on children.
2, Tell irresponsible parents that it's not their fault (which actually is).
3, Open an "Internet Addition" rehab.
4, Charge rediculous fees.
5, Abuse his patients untill they promise (or pretend to promise) they will never play World of Warcraft (or whatever their parents deem as harmful) again.
6, Parents get pleased and more parents send their kids to his rehab.
7, PROFIT!

After all, I must say he's slightly better than the ultimate asshole named Yang Yongxin. At least he doesn't employ high voltage shock therapy in his rehab.

Exactly. Consider Baidu.com (Google China's largest competitor) donated 40 million RMB to CCTV (who has been doing substantial exposure on "Google's key role in spreading pornography"). So it's likely there is econimical reasons as well as political ones behind this one.

1, Get 'elected' as high government official at the Industrial and Information Department.
2, Start your own company (using someone else's name of course) selling filter software (with OpenCV (BSD licensed) binary lib without any proper credit).
3, Win the contract in the government <sarcasm>public bidding</sarcasm>.
4, Enjoy mandatory installation across the country.
5, The one-year free trial expires.
6, ???
7, PROFIT!

Sir, I would like to remind you that there is a substantial difference between the letter 'n' and the letter 'd'. Thank you.

Actually censorship does not contribute as much as lobbying from competition in this case.

WOW has dominated the Chinese MMORPG market for years and currently all the OTHER MMORPG companies are spending big fortunes on lobbying (aka bribing) the "department of (anti-)culture" to delay WLK as much as they can. They know that WOW will eat their lunch with the new expansion pack and one more day delay of WLK's debut means gain in millions for them.

So as any corrupt agency will do, the DOC is busy inventing ridiculous reasons to deny clearance for the game. "Oh noes! References like the Massacre of Stratholme are so harmful for the helpless minds of our young people! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!1!".

I don't think Nineth City (agent for WOW mainland) has much chance in this "9C vs Everyone Else" war. By the way, almost all my WOWer friends have quit playing and those who are really into that game (shame on them) have switched to servers in Taiwan anyway.

Oh yeah I am Chinese. No penis jokes please.