Google is negotiating to make its return to China, seven years after the search engine pulled out its plug in the mainland.

"China has been in touch with Google through various channels," Liu Binje, a standing committee member of the National People's Congress, said. "Last year, leaders of our country's important department had further communication with Google."

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Liu detailed that the information giant's Google Scholar, a search engine for scholarly literature, will likely be the first service to stage the much-awaited comeback as it is also listed among Beijing's priority for re-entry.

"China's focus in on [making] academic progress, such as academic exchanges as well as [exchanges in] science and culture, instead of news, information or politics," Liu said.

Lawmakers said there is a chance that a part of Google's business will return to the world's biggest internet market first, gradually followed by others. Other functions are also under negotiation, including those "service functions that do not involve [politically] sensitive information." However, no timetable has been laid out for Google's return plans.

Currently, Google is not available for China's 721 million users, and it could only be accessed through VPNs (virtual private networks). The company pulled out its services in China in 2010 over a disagreement on Beijing's strict censorship policies.

Google has however expressed its intent to re-enter the market from time to time. Eric Schmidt, Alphabet's CEO, said in 2015 that Google was in constant talks with Beijing as it sought to "serve the whole of China."

Liu said that should Google want to re-enter and operate again in China, it should abide on China laws. However, he also noted that complying with the Chinese law would not only harm Google's global operation rules but also hurt its image as a fair and open platform.

"Some agreements have yet to be reached in this aspect," Liu said.

Other tech giants like Facebook and Twitter are also blocked in China after they refused to comply with the government's demands to censor information on the platform.