Google’s partial withdrawal from the China market yesterday brought swift condemnation from the government while leaving Chinese Web surfers to wonder whether they would be able to access a new offshore search engine site or be blocked by censors.

Google’s decision to move most of its China-based search functions to Hong Kong opened a new phase in a two-month-long fracas pitting the world’s most powerful Internet company against a government that tightly restricts the Web in the planet’s most populous market.