Google, China And A Balancing Act

12:12 Jan 14th, 2010 | Notes

Google today announced that after dealing with malicious threats against its infrastructure, theft of its intellectual property and targeted attacks against Chinese human rights activists who use Google services, the search giant is readying to remove all censorship of its search engine inside China possibly resulting in the exit of Google from the country altogether.

Above and beyond what it says about Google’s lack of success in China and their stance on human rights, this should send a clear message to the west that largest country in the world still has its door closed. This seems to be one of the biggest event in recent years which represents the extent to which information is suffocated entering the ‘Central Kingdom’. Google exiting China may be a big deal for us, but China’s government will not be taken for a ride that easily.

It’s important to make a distinction between China hating the west and China just hating western technology and web services. China does not hate the west. Going around China I found western influence everywhere. A Nokia mobile store in Shanghai, student wearing Nike clothing, drinking Coke and talking about the NBL. However, it was clear to me that the youth in China don’t understand the extent to which they are censored.

Looking back over the past year, freedom of speech has been the driving force for the totalitarian level of censorship happening in China. During the olympics, Amnesty International, the BBC and other reputable news sources were shut off in China, much to the dismay and anger of the western press. Even the Apple iTunes Store was shut down after the government discovered athletes were downloading the pro-Tibet album, Song for Tibet, in an act of silent protest. The ‘Golden Shield Project’, also known as the Great Firewall of China, aims to shut out any unregulated content streaming into China including Wikipedia, Livejournal, Twitter and Facebook at various times. In July last year, the Chinese government legislated that every new computer sold in China is required to come with the ‘Green Dam’ program, another thinly concealed way to increase censorship. The government also required all media outlets to stop publishing anything critical towards the software before its release.

At this point in time, it’s hard to know what to do next. A quick Google search reveals that every company with web services you can think of has undergone some sort of censorship during their time online in China; Bing, Skype, Yahoo! Search, Google, Flickr, Hotmail, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Aol. Heck, even my blog is blocked in China according to Just Ping and Websitepulse.

Google has now created a precedent for the rest of the world to follow: boycott China. But there are two sides to every argument. On one hand, the restriction of speech goes against our natural sense of democracy and freedom. That argument says companies should pull out of China in protest and to send a message. But on the other hand, those companies, the Chinese government and us western spectators are not the only players in this debate. There are 1.3 billion people who are directly affected by the choices of the internet giants. The result of pulling out of China all together would have a severely negative outcome for loyal customers, however few their may apparently be. Imagine if that happened in the US. Without knowledge of the extent of censorship on the internet, average Chinese citizens would be disillusioned and angry. This argument says that restricted service is better for the people than no service.

It’s 2010, and there is very little space left to tip toe around such an issue anymore. In my opinion, it’s time that some strong messages were sent. After all, the internet is becoming an indispensable part of our daily lives and that of the Chinese.

It’s beyond me why the level of censorship is so ridiculously high. There is no way that censorship can stop people finding out what they want to know. Seeing western companies leave their country may spark curiosity and start the Chinese questioning their government. Regardless, China’s growth as a world market means that the government will have to eventually respect freedom of speech, whether they like it or not, starting with the internet. All official international talks on the subject have obviously failed and not even the IOC could get the Chinese government to keep a promise on censorship. Maybe it is time that private industry does the talking.

Click through for a photo comparison between Google.cn and Google.com search results.

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