Page 2 of 2 Winner of Google-China feud is - India
By Peter Lee
It doesn't appear that Google stirred the China pot with very much forethought.
According to an inside account [5], following an urgent Christmas Eve confab
convened by Google founder Larry Page, the situation percolated for three weeks
before Google made its shock announcement on January 12.
Google's industry and international associates were apparently not in the loop.
Bill Gates of Microsoft and John Chambers, chief executive officer of Cisco
Systems, went public with statements dismissing
Google's sensitivities on the Aurora hack.
India was unprepared to do anything more than respond with vague generalities
concerning the openness of its Internet and its suitability as a partner for
Google.
One may wonder if Google anticipated the diplomatic firestorm it would ignite
by going public with its conflict with China.
In the January 21 conference call, Google's Eric Schmidt stated his desire to
remain in China. Indeed, there are reports of negotiations concerning
modifications to the filtering restrictions under which Google search engine
works in China.
Even if Google embarked on this path with the limited objective of leveraging
international indignation over the hack into concessions by the Chinese
authorities to relax the Google.cn search engine filtering regime in a
meaningful way (thereby earning Google human-rights credibility and positioning
Google.cn as a service returning superior in-China results compared to its
nemesis, Baidu), that ship has probably sailed.
Simply walking back the tense situation and negotiating some kind of symbolic,
face-saving compromise on filtering of search-engine results may also be out of
reach, thanks to the rapid escalation of political rhetoric by the Obama
administration.
In a speech in Washington on January 21, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
planted the US government flag as champion of the "right to connect" to an open
Internet. Echoing the phrase of British statesman Winston Churchill that
announced the beginning of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West,
she talked of an "information curtain" (rather than an iron curtain) descending
across the world at the behest of totalitarian regimes.
Clearly, the lengthy speech was prepared long in advance to burnish America's
information age luster. Equally clear was the fact that one paragraph was
inserted about the Google case at the last minute.
Clinton issued a call that the Chinese government investigate the Google case
"transparently", implying in effect that China had a responsibility to mollify
foreign stakeholders based on Google's so far undocumented public assertions:
And
we look to the Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough review of the cyber
intrusions that led Google to make its announcement. And we also look for that
investigation and its results to be transparent.
Open-society
advocates lauded the tough American approach, even as IT professionals pointed
out the awkward fact that the US itself embargoes Internet software - including
Google's Chrome browser - to deny the benefits of Internet openness to users
within Syria, Sudan and other countries.
The Chinese government - which has labored mightily to create an international
regime in which China is an acknowledged superpower and not the target of
condescending and embarrassing demands for transparency - responded with
predictable heat.
China's Ministry of Foreign Relations denounced Clinton's call, stating, "We
urge the US to respect facts and stop attacking China under the excuse of the
so-called freedom of Internet."
China's Global Times accused the United States of "information imperialism".
According to an Associated Press report [7], the US government seems willing to
up the ante:
Washington, meanwhile, carried its message on Internet
freedom directly to Chinese bloggers. The US Embassy in Beijing and consulates
in Shanghai and Guangzhou hosted Internet-streamed discussions with members of
the blogging community on Friday afternoon - the latest example of Washington's
outreach to Chinese bloggers as a way of spreading its message.
The bloggers met with US diplomats from the political, economic and public
affairs sections, who held discussions and answered questions about Clinton's
speech. The meetings were similar to a session organized during Obama's visit
to China in November.
It would appear that nothing good for
US-China relations will come of this. Perhaps the United States doesn't care
too much.
In a widely-linked comment entitled "The Google news : China enters its
Bush-Cheney era" [8], the Atlantic Monthly's James Fallows saw the Google case
as a regrettable hardening of Chinese attitudes towards the US just as America
was entering the halcyon period of the Obama administration.
It is more likely that the Obama administration, with the world financial
system stabilized and Chinese goodwill a less vital commodity than before, and
its own political fortunes in jeopardy, has found it politically expedient and
feasible to harden towards China.
The fallout will perhaps be an accelerated slide by Google - and the United
States - into the Indian camp.
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