It would be normal for anybody running a high-profile, politically controversial operation in China to anticipate worst-case scenario, and to do everything possible to guard against them.

Consistently, Baidu has censored politically sensitive search results much more thoroughly than Google.cn.

Every year in China, Internet executives are officially rewarded for their 'patriotism.'

The trend in China is toward tighter and tighter control. They are basically improving their censorship mechanisms.

Many of the Kuomintang elite in Taiwan have relatives among the ruling elite here on mainland China.

If they lose their legal basis for owning a .cn domain, google.cn would cease to exist, or if it continued to exist, it would be illegal, and doing anything blatantly illegal in China puts their employees at serious risk.