Ending US Internet Companies’ Apologism for Censorship
Amidst the protests and media coverage of the day’s events it’s important to recall what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. We’re protesting American internet companies – primarily Google, but also Yahoo, Microsoft, and Cisco – for their willingness to work with the Chinese government to block information from users inside Tibet and China. Students for a Free Tibet, as an organization working for Tibetan independence, believes that we can effect change inside China by stopping Western corporations from turning a blind eye towards China’s repression when evaluating partnerships with the them. Every time an American corporation partners with China, they condone China’s actions vis a vis human rights, free speech, and rule of law.
John Battelle, a blogger on search technology and the internet, tackles the problems these internet companies have created for themselves in their relationships with China. Most importantly, he recognizes that they have the power to introduce real change and freedom to China’s internet, yet have refused to own up to their responsibility.
Let’s set up the problem here, just for reference sake. After all, what’s the big deal? Just like a sneaker company, Yahoo, Google, et al all have to play by Chinese rules in order to do business in China. If Nike can do it, why not Google? Well, let’s break that one down. What happens when Nike gets itself into a PR pickle over, say, child labor or issues of environmental degradation or fair wages? Why, Nike simply pledges to do better, to spend a bit more to nominally clean up the environment, or to pay its workers a living wage, or to not hire children. Such practices cost Nike a bit more money, but don’t raise any eyebrows in Beijing. Nothing wrong with a US company spending more in China, after all.
But companies like Yahoo and Google don’t traffic in sneakers, they traffic in the most powerful forces in human culture – expression. Knowledge. Ideas. The freedom of which we take as fundamental in this country, yet somehow, we seem to have forgotten its importance in the digital age – in China, one protesting email can land you in jail for 8 years, folks.
But… should GYMA [Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL] decide they wanted to create some kind of pact that actually, well, had an opinion about how those forces of freedom should be let loose in a place like China, well, we all know how that would fly in Beijing. Not to mention Wall Street, of course.
Battelle, despite seeing these flaws in corporate behavior, believes the bulk of the blame for US companies promoting censorship and government snooping in China lies with the US government. More specifically, he sees the lack of US government policies to protect businesses’ ability to hold on to moral values when dealing with China.
Until that government gives GYMA a China policy it can align behind, well, they’ll never align, and the very foundation of our culture – free expression and privacy, will be imperiled.
Hopefully tomorrow’s hearings of the Congressional Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights, and International Operations will lead towards legislation that establishes groundrules for companies operating inside regimes, like China, that censor or filter the internet for political purposes. The hearings will be broadcast online, which is appropriate — though will users inside Tibet and China be able to listen in?
Google’s deal with China remains antithetical to the interests of freedom and democracy. Charlie Madigan writes:
Knowledge is a liberator. Understand the value of truth, and make certain it is available everywhere… Google’s behavior, to my mind, amounts to a businessman’s deal with the devil. If you are Chinese and looking for unpleasant, unapproved history, Google will be of no value. You may still see ads, of course, and spend money on ridiculous consumer goods.
For whatever justifications Google makes, the only thing they’ve succeeded in doing is finding a new market that doesn’t ask them to abide by any standards of ethics when doing business. Obey CCP requests and everyone gets rich. Forget that this comes at the expense of a billion people’s liberty and you even get to sleep well at night.
Our protest aims to provide the impetus for a change of business practices between US companies and China. Whether or not corporations are capable of doing the right thing and saying no to China’s demands for more and more tools of repression without the US government stepping in will be seen. What cannot be denied is the longing for people inside Tibet and China to have access to free and unfetter information through the internet. I’ll close with some words from Yan’s Glutter. Yan is a blogger from Hong Kong and a former writer for a site owned by the Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
I joined a dotcom, one that was owned by Xin Hua Agency, the Chinese Government Press. It made me censor the news, and ban sensitive information. It made me write out lists of words and thoughts that cannot be shared! I felt bereft. I hated it, but as with any abusive situation I stayed too long. I didn’t believe in the internet revolution anymore and google you gave me hope. You were supposed to be different. But you let me down in the same way…
Change can come when internet companies provide users inside Tibet and China with the same tools they give the rest of the world. Our moral expectations for human rights and civil liberties are universal and cannot be allowed to stop at the People’s Republic of China’s borders.
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