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China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology refuted that China has been involved in any negotiations with Google since the US search engine threatened on January 21 to pull back from the country.

"We have yet to have any direct contacts or negotiations with them on this topic," said Miao Wei, vice minister of the MIIT, at the sidelines of the annual session of the National People's Congress.

He said China respects Google's right to decide whether to continue its business in the country, but that the US search engine has to cope with the aftermath of its retreating well and protect the legal rights for millions of its Chinese users.

Miao also said he didn't think the Google incident should affect relations between China and the US.

"It's not a huge problem that should impact the relationship of two countries," he said. He said China doesn't want to see an Internet technical incident upgraded to a political dispute.

He also said China welcomes Google to provide further information about the hacker attacks it claimed. "We will definitely investigate on the issue, because we are the victims of hackers too."