Not quite. The Great Firewall of China has the ability to shut off access to specific sites, services, and even communications protocols very easily and very effectively. Trying to access Google from China doesn't result in a page from Google apologizing that they won't comply with Chinese laws. It's as if the services simply doesn't exist and you get a 404 error.

Also, Google actually has a sizeable office in Beijing. I'm not sure what they do specifically since it's not easy to access any of their public services without an obscure VPN (the most popular ones get blocked pretty quickly).