That’s the conclusion of famed Chinese blogger Zhao Jing near the end of Clive Thompson’s fascinating (in its details) and disturbing (in its equivocation) New York Times Magazine article today – Google’s China Problem (and China’s Google Problem). Yahoo has been selected as the fall guy here because its actions in China – passing email identities of dissidents to authorities which resulted in the lenghty incarceration of these same dissidents – most egregiously cater to China’s totalitarian impulses. Overall, the article asks the question: Can an imperfect Internet help change a society for the better? Thompson’s answer, despite numerous quibbles, appears in my reading to be yes. Although he may be right in the long run, this is not justification for me for US companies observing laws and traditions that keep the door open for despotism. Maybe I’m just not sufficiently post-modern enough – or have any Google stock. Still, Thompson’s article is definitely worth a read. This is the best overview I have seen of how the relationship between these companies and China developed.
If I was a freedom loving Chinese man (and also concerned about self-preservation), I’d go back to jinning up annonymous pamphlets.
With effective filters in place, and helpful companies like the three mentioned in this post, the ChiCom government has at its disposal a wonderful new medium in which to exert mind control.
During the House Congressional hearing in which these companies were asked to explain themselves, Tom Lantos asked the best question of all (and there were lots of great questions): Given that a Chinese blogger was now in the gulag because of Yahoo’s “policy of openess” vis a vis the Chinese Government… had Yahoo approached the man’s family to see if they needed any help, ie financial help??? The startled look on the faces of those men was quite something to see.
Cisco, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft were all represented on that particular panel.
This is another theater of operations in the classic conflict of a company fiduciary duty to its shareholders and its responsibility to “do the right thing”. If Justice O’Connor theory of our “evolving standards of decency” is to triumph, the case against despotism may have to be revisited. As these companies nuanced before congress, in China, the Chinese government IS the legal controlling authority, Big time
Heather,
Companies are in business to make money, not to further the welfare of the families of dissidents in China. Has the NYT ever been called on the carpet because of its blatant propagandizing for Stalin? Did they ever make reparations to the families of all those starving Russians?
Microsoft is a software company, Google a search company, and Yahoo a “new media” company (whatever that means). All they want to do is produce software, search, and media content. None of them wishes to be involved in politics in any form.
Nor should we expect this of them. Do we really want unelected companies to be our moral arbiters? Why would we expect them to be successful in that role?
I’ve never understood this “Google is evil” meme. It has always struck me as a cart-before-the-horse approach to life: first find somebody to be evil, somebody upon whom we can pin the proverbial tail, in other words, and then find a reason for the pinning.
The deeper question here is why we think it is perfectly reasonable to impose our values on the Chinese. As our two societies become more integrated, it strikes me as far more likely that cultural harmonization will flow in the opposite direction.
“The deeper question here is why we think it is perfectly reasonable to impose our values on the Chinese. As our two societies become more integrated, it strikes me as far more likely that cultural harmonization will flow in the opposite direction.”
Whatever.
Thank you, stock option apologist. Your fumes are wasted here. But, please, do continue your wind-bagging, elsewhere, amongst your post-national corporate colleagues.
We have all been down this road before.
In the early 1940′s, IBM sold Hollerith machines to the Nazis, through their European subsidiaries. The Nazis made fine use of these machines, counting the dead in Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau.
But hey, that’s commerce, so who are you to get in the way?
Today, so-called American companies, malingering under the protection of an American taxpayer-funded blue water navy, are gleefully whoring themselves to a mortal enemy of that same navy.
Most, in a more sensible era, called such perfidy “treason.”
But today, our captains of commerce enable the enemy, and enhance his tyrrany, and applaud themselves on the wisdom of their greed.
My suggestion to those who engage in, and defend, such practices with regard to red China is, be gone from us, and go reside in that place that increases your “wisdom.”
So, why do you linger here?
It Insider,
China, unlike Nazi Germany, is not our enemy. We are not at war with them. Under such circumstances, for companies to do business with China is hardly “treason”. You should probably be a little less loose with your epithets, lest you become the boy who cried wolf.
By the way, do you ever buy anything from China? If so, how do you sleep at night knowing that you are spending dollars that will buy Chinese bullets to shoot our fellow countrymen?
I’m not really sure that anyone at this point can be accused of holding a consistant position on politics…
First of all, we have the conservatives. Conservatives held a pretty consistant position. Little to no government interference in commerce and personal life and liberties. Now, many conservatives seem to think that the government’s interference in commerce and personal life is perfectly acceptable and act as apologists for something that would have been considered bullshit not 20 years ago.
Liberals, at one time, were consistant with their view that the government should be involved in commerce and personal life. Yet now, they’re completely confused about when the government is allowed and when its not. Their patent hatred of a group that would deny civil rights has become equivocation based on confusion (as far as I can tell).
Conservatives, at one time, would have said either “The government should never have called these companies to task… the market should accept or destroy them for their political decisions.”
Or, they might have said “Why the fuck are they doing business in RED CHINA anyway?!”
But now, somehow the Conservatives think that these American companies should be in foreign markets and yet somehow ignore the laws of the governments that own those markets. And, apparently, if these companies don’t follow this idea, then the government should directly intercede in the market and toss them all in the slammer for being ‘evil’ and ‘treasonous’.
I’m not sure if the politically active people in this country are hitting the crack pipe, or seeing the effects of paint chips eaten as children… but there seems no consistant position on anything from eany party at this point… except that liberals hate bush (and conservatives) and conservatives hate liberals (and gays, socialsts or anti-war protesters… depending on the flavor of conservative).