China may be relaxing its dot-com standards.

Regulators have renewed Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) license in China, even though the search engine giant is still sending visitors to its Hong Kong site with uncensored query results.

The saving grace for Google, apparently, is that it's no longer simply redirecting mainland users hitting Google.cn to its largely unfiltered site in Hong Kong. Visitors need to click on a prominent link within the Google.cn landing page to arrive at the offsite site.

It's merely a technicality, but it does make China-based engines more convenient. More importantly from a commercial standpoint, this should continue to make it easier for Baidu (NYSE: BIDU) to attract the growing pool of advertisers seeking to smoke out online leads.

We're still waiting to see if anyone other than Baidu will benefit from Google's juggling act. This should have been a golden opportunity for Sohu.com's (Nasdaq: SOHU) Sogou and other smaller engines. This should have been a dinner bell for Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Bing to emerge as a Western alternative to Google.

The potential in China is undeniable. The economy is growing at a faster clip than many smaller nations. With roughly a quarter of its population online, the cyberspace migration in China is still in its infancy. The market will continue to grow. Barring any recessionary setbacks, disposable income and advertising budgets will continue to grow.

Analysts see Baidu's profits nearly doubling to $1.25 a share this year, soaring 57% to $1.96 a share come 2011. Bears will argue that Baidu is overpriced at 37 times next year's projected profitability, but that's actually a significantly smaller multiple than its head growth rate.

If that's the growth pace in China's Internet market, Google could use the boost. Wall Street is targeting earnings-per-share growth of just 19% this year and 15% next year for global search leader.

So will Google begin taking a few more chances now that its license to operate Google.cn has been renewed? Maybe it won't have to. I can't be the only one surprised that the historically restrictive Chinese government renewed Big G's license. Is there really that much of a difference between a defiant redirection and forcing users into an additional click? Could it be that China is either softening its censorship stance or at least loosening its grip on the great firewall of China? Its recent flexibility on the yuan valuation -- knowing full well that it would impact exports and the value of its overseas investments -- was a gutsy move that signals its willingness to be a team player under the right circumstances.

Maybe it no longer wants to be seen as the masked villain in the Google vs. China battle royale.

Any real signs of China softening its stance will probably come through Baidu. After all, it's still likely to play favorites in the bending process. Who knows? Punching "Tiananmen Square" in a Chinese search engine in a few months -- one of the filtered terms -- may actually mean something.

What should Google do next in China? Will China really bend? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.