China flap turns up heat on US tech
giants By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - Internet giants Microsoft,
Yahoo, Google and Cisco Systems are bracing for a
severe tongue-lashing when a US House of
Representatives subcommittee on global human
rights convenes on Wednesday.
The stakes
are high: the companies involved are the crown
jewels of the US high-technology industry, and the
outcome of the
brewing controversy over their
alleged acquiescence to Chinese government
human-rights violations could substantially affect
the future of their businesses in that country -
universally acknowledged to be a crucial market.
Politicians and human-rights activists
promise to pull no punches over what they
characterize as the dubious ethics of agreements
the US-based companies have struck with the
Chinese government. In a nutshell, the companies
have vowed to adhere to what Westerners generally
regard as repressive Chinese laws on censorship as
well as - at least in Yahoo's case - aiding
Chinese authorities in what would clearly be
considered unacceptable violations of the right to
privacy in the United States. All this comes,
however, in exchange for entry into the
fastest-growing Internet market on the planet.
There have been some signs in recent days
that the protests against the tech companies'
activities may be gaining traction. On Sunday, US
Congressman Chris Smith was reportedly drafting a
bill that would force US Internet firms to locate
computer servers outside of China and other
nations deemed repressive to human rights. If this
should become law, it would have a major impact on
search-engine businesses such as Google and Yahoo,
because it could make their search engines
unusably slow inside China. Google has already
reported that its main search engine is down about
10% of the time in China and slow even when it is
working - problems the company attributes to its
servers being located outside China.
With
access to 110 million Internet users - second only
to the US - at stake in China, kowtowing to the
country's leaders makes perfect business sense.
But it has also raised some free-speech and
human-rights questions that company executives
will no doubt be forced to field at Wednesday's
hearings on Capitol Hill. How far are tech firms
willing to go to please Chinese authorities? And,
of course, how far do those authorities plan to
take them?
Up to this point, the tech
firms have defended themselves by stating that
they, like any foreign enterprise in any field,
are obliged to follow Chinese laws while operating
in China. It is, however, exactly this adherence
to the law that has generated such controversy in
the West.
At Wednesday's hearings, for
example, Yahoo representatives might be asked
about the case of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist
who has been jailed for 10 years after the company
helped police trace e-mails he had sent to
human-rights organizations overseas, deemed
seditious by the Chinese government.
And
Microsoft executives may be obliged to explain why
several weeks ago, at Beijing's request, the
company closed down the popular online journal of
blogger Zhao Jing, who also works as a research
assistant in the Beijing bureau of the New
York Times. Committee members may also want to
know why, last year, Microsoft launched an MSN
portal that blocks the use of the words "freedom"
and "democracy" in the names of blogs. On Google's
China search engine, www.google.cn, the word
"democracy" is also a no-no, as are any mention of
Taiwanese or Tibetan independence, the 1989
Tiananmen crackdown or the banned Falungong
spiritual movement, regarded as a cult by Beijing.
Is the recurrent reply to all these
developments - "But it's the law" - an adequate
one? Increasingly, it seems, the tech firms
themselves realize the answer is no. On Wednesday,
we should expect a more robust defense. Indeed,
that defense has already begun to take shape and,
despite the rage of activists and certain members
of the US Congress, it has considerable substance,
especially here in Asia.
Bill Gates
himself weighed in recently at a
Microsoft-sponsored conference in Lisbon on the
use of Internet technology in the public sector,
arguing that it is better for Microsoft to be
present rather than absent in such markets as
China, even if restricted. And, the Microsoft
chief added, government censorship of the Internet
is an illusory goal at best. "You may be able to
take a very visible website and say that something
shouldn't be there," he said, "but if there's a
desire by the population to know something, it's
going to get out."
Following up on its
chairman's remarks in Portugal, Microsoft
announced new company guidelines on how it will
deal with demands for government censorship in
China or anywhere else. Under the new policy, the
company will only block content on its MSN Spaces
if served formal notice by a government that the
content is in violation of the law, or if it
transgresses MSN's terms of use. And, from now on,
Microsoft will notify users whose blogs have been
shut down; in the past, the unlucky bloggers were
surprised by a unexplained dead link. In addition,
the company is working on technology that will
allow content blocked by censorship laws in one
country to be seen by the rest of the world.
As for Google - the company with the "do
no evil" motto - the firm can piggyback on Gates'
argument and claim that the complete absence of
its service in China would represent a greater
evil than its fettered presence. For now, the
China Google search engine sends an explanatory
message to any user whose quest for information
has been filtered. In the future, the company
hopes, domestic and international demand will lead
to fewer and fewer such messages. In the meantime,
uncertainty over the future of the company's China
venture has arguably contributed to a recent
decline in its stock price: Google has tumbled 25%
compared with a month ago, and some analysts are
predicting a further 50% decline.
On
Wednesday, the US Big Four - Microsoft, Yahoo,
Google and Cisco, which supplied the Chinese
government with switching equipment that is a
great help to its Web monitoring and filtering
system - plan to present a united front. Microsoft
and Yahoo, in an attempt to transfer the ball to
Washington's court, have already teamed up to
issue a joint statement calling on the US
government to take steps to persuade Beijing to
stop censoring the Internet.
"We urge the
United States government to take a leadership role
in this regard," the statement said, "and have
initiated a dialogue with relevant US officials to
encourage such government-to-government
engagement."
So Wednesday's hearings may
not turn out to be the one-sided slamming session
that has been anticipated. For many people in
Asia, however, the political point and
counterpoint that are about to take place in
Washington seem little more than a rhetorical
luxury. If members of the human-rights committee
were to ask Chinese Internet users if they are
more informed now, even with a censored Internet,
than they have ever been before, the answer would
be an unqualified yes. And surely the way to fight
back against censorship in China is not for the US
companies to pull out, thus leaving Chinese
cyberspace completely in the hands of the Public
Security Bureau.
The situation is complex,
but some things seem reasonably clear: in the new,
economically rising China, censorship probably
will not end because of anything Google and/or
other foreign companies decide to do or not to do.
And neither will congressional ranting in the US
make much difference. When blocking the free flow
of information across its borders dulls China's
competitive edge and impedes its economic growth
sufficiently to put Communist Party rule at risk,
it will stop. For now, indeed, presence (not to
mention huge profits) is better than absence.
Kent Ewing is a teacher and
writer at Hong Kong International School. He can
be reached atkewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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