As an Interent application or online service, "Google Books" may not necessarily be found infringement.
But, Google would be held infringement liability if it really scanned Chinese books without authors’ consents.
First of all, I am talking about Chinese copyright Law. As for whether the same act would be held infringement in the US courts, I don’t know. I don’t know because once the Google Book Settlement is approved by judge, the case will be dismissed without ruling. Even if the settlement were not approved, and even if the case were finally ruled favoring Google, it would merely be a US judgement binding in the US, not necessarily binding in China. In other words, so long as the case is in Chinese courts’ jurisdiction, Chinese courts shall, according to Chinese copyrigh law, make their onw decisions no matter what the US court’s ruling is. This is a crutial common sence, but I doubt many people may forget it, because for a long time, I see too many comments to Chinese cases according to US laws.
Second, the only relationship between the US court’s ruling and China is: if China thinks a US binding judgment or the approval of settlement violate TRIPS, China may file the case to the WTO.
Third, back to the dispute between Chinese writers and Google, for the forgivable exploitation of the copyrighted works, Chinese copyright law is following the European mode of "limitations to coyright" but not the US concept of "fair use". Therefore, unless a non-liability provision has been provided explicitly, the conduct will be judged infringement once such conduct is regulated in Art. 10 of Chinese Copyright Law as the content of copyright. Until now, China only allows the search engines to store the content in other websites automatically. A conduct of scanning the books, from the first pege to the last, from the first line of each shelf to the last line, constitutes infringement definitely (unless the conductor is public library).
Fourth, Google’s self-limitation of accessing to the full-text of the scanned books is another story. The infringement has been established soon after scanning and storing books in its servers.
Last but not less importantly, this is a legal and positivist analysis. Not a value criticism. I am not saying that Google Books is a good/bad thing hereby. I am also not saying that one should not look at the case and the whole set of the current law critically. On the contrary, the real criticism should be based the fact on which some obvious good thing is hindered by the existing law, or some obvious bad thing is permitted by the existing law.
有人把CNNIC的
我的家乡昆明有一个绝佳的观日出地点：滇池畔的西山。小时候为了看日出，在西山里的寺庙住下，天寒地冻地睡在硬得像石头一样的铺头上。好不容易睡着了，又突然被父母逼迫起床，昏头昏脑地被拖到观景的地方，心里充满怨恨。但是，当那轮红日从远处山峦中最终纵身一跃的时候，我还是被震撼了——太阳真的是跳出来的。从此留下心理阴影，导致我后来学习量变产生质变的原理时非常顺利，马上就知道：尽管时钟滴答滴答，对任何一个时间点都没有歧视。但一些事件真的可以成为时代的分水岭。
这是为什么？
[update 2009-12-6] LJR兄提醒我说信息网络传播权保护条例第21条是不管“搜索引擎扫描复制网页到自己的服务器”的行为的。我才发现自己一开始写这篇帖子的时候，脑子里把“网页快照”和“系统缓存”混在一起了。下面是修改后的帖子，绿色部分是新增加的，删除线部分是原来写的一些话。本文不得转载（因为你一转载就把删除线转载丢了，文章就乱套了）。
对网页的检索为什么不侵权？经济学上社会学意上的原因我这里不分析，而是说明法律上的原因：很简单，因为法律的规定。中国的《信息网络传播权保护条例》中将这种情况作为“对著作权的限制”排除在侵权之外了。条例颁布于2006年，颁布之前这种行为在中国侵权不侵权？我不知道，因为没有明确的法律规定将作品数字化是否是“复制”。好了，先把搜索网页的搜索引擎服务放在一边，转过头来分析谷歌图书搜索：这个和网页搜索又是不一样的：Google是将本来是实体的书本全文扫描后，再放到网站上，这已经完全不是条例第21条的范围。所以，无疑是侵权的。
归纳一下，为什么搜索网页不侵权，搜索图书就侵权？这个问题本身就有误解。法律并没有说提供搜索网页的服务不侵权。相反，至少在目前的中国法律体系中，为了提供搜索服务，而将网页整个地存储在服务器中也是侵权的。网页快照更是侵权的，只是这一服务对大家都有好处，并且搜索引擎提供了让网站决定自己是否被搜索、是否被快照的功能，所以没有人告。
因为法律对为了搜索网页的目的，将已经被他人数字化的作品进行自动的全文复制的行为提供了有严格条件限制的免责待遇。但无论如何，行为人自己将图书一本一本全文数字化并永久存储，以便自己提供内容搜索服务这个行为，与将他人数字化的网页存放在服务器中、随着他人网页的变化自动变化的情况是完全不同的，法律肯定没有为数字化图书的行为提供免责待遇，肯定属于侵权行为。————————————
[1] 《信息网络传播权保护条例》其实不只在讲作为“著作权”下位概念的“信息网络传播权”，而是在讲信息网络上的著作权。这后面的原因在于一个巨大的误解，讲出来就是一篇论文了。因为跟主题关系已经不大，这里不多说了。
[2] 即使我们在未来的著作权法改革中，从别的理由出发（比如公共图书馆的合理使用…可惜谷歌无论如何都不是图书馆，所以也轮不到它），认为可以将某些扫描图书并提供网上浏览的行为合法化，都还可以再讨论，但以适当引用这一条作为出发点——讲直接一点——完全不搭边。