A top Google executive told US lawmakers Wednesday that the Internet giant is prepared to leave China if Beijing says it must censor Web searches or quit the world's most populous online market.

"Google is firm in its decision that it will stop censoring our search results for China," Google vice president and deputy general counsel Nicole Wong told the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.

"If the option is that we'll shutter our .cn operation and leave the country, we are prepared to do that," she said at a hearing on the relationship between Internet technology and aiding democratic activists around the world.