Google and the Limits of Cyber-Democratization

By: Charles Cooper
Topics: In The News

Late last fall, the Carnegie Endowment's Albert Keidel published a widely-noted paper which forecast that China would become the "pre-eminent world commercial influence" by the year 2035 - the year he predicts it will overtake the United States economy. Until now, there was little doubt that American technology companies would play a big role helping China realize that future. But what if politics forced Silicon Valley to the side?

That's no longer a hypothetical.

In a bolt-from-the-blue announcement, Google said late Tuesday that it no longer would censor search results in China. At the same time, the company warned that it would consider packing up and leaving if the government refused to modify its policies.

This qualifies as one of those rare hold-the-presses moments. China's brand of authoritarian capitalism has been wildly successful and American tech stars like Google have steamed the Pacific to get in on the Asian gold rush. But before hanging out a shingle, they agreed to pay the price of admission -in this case it meant going along with the regime's guidelines for doing business in China. So it was that Google self-censored search results on its local service. Google justified its decision by arguing that there was a larger good being served. Co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin - they of "Do No Evil Fame" - knew they were not entirely on the side of the angels, but they could still claim to be doing more good than harm by virtue of the fact that Google was spreading access to information for the average Chinese.

This wasn't the first time the tech industry has had to weigh its principles against its commercial self-interest. During the apartheid struggle in the 1980s most computer companies pulled out of South Africa in concert with many other American businesses. The notable exception was IBM, which said it could do more for local black workers by maintaining its presence. Like IBM, Google agreed to compromise on one of its tenets in the hope that Beijing eventually would adopt the norms of a more open society.

That turned out to be a pipedream. After the disclosure that unidentified hackers had targeted the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists late last year, Google concluded that it was time to end the charade. (So far Google has not officially blamed the Chinese government, though the regime is a likely suspect.)

The focus now shifts to Yahoo and Microsoft, which also operate in China. Assuming Google doesn't reach a last-minute deal with the Chinese government, I suppose Yahoo and Microsoft could try and fill the vacuum left behind. But as News.com's Ina Fried correctly notes, that would invite sharp criticism at home and I'm quite sure neither company has the belly for a another congressional grilling about its business practices. Meanwhile, shares of Chinese search company Baidu were up on the Google news. After all, business is business.

Charles Cooper is an executive editor at CNET News. He has covered technology and business for more than 25 years, working at CBSNews.com, the Associated Press, Computer & Software News, Computer Shopper, PC Week, and ZDNet. E-mail Charlie.

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by NowBeWithThat January 13, 2010 11:17 AM EST: Google is making a business decision, nothing more. It got hacked and trust is essential to its brand.

Google figured out it's not worth the yuan to be a tracking tool in the Chinese government's war against its human rights activists.

China has been itching to take America's place in the world. Let the Chinese create their own version of Google. If it's anything like historically substandard products, China will get laughed out of the market.; Reply to this comment


by alphaa10000 January 13, 2010 1:14 AM EST: POSTPONING HISTORY

The Beijing dictatorship, sensing a threat to its power, will say anything and do anything to secure its rule. This ruling oligarchy changes ideological masks faster than the Chinese people can follow, even with Xinhua News Agency's dutiful explanations.

Now, with sentecing Liu Xiaobo, Beijing wears its dragon mask to frighten the Chinese people-- and to disguise its own fears of popular democracy.

The mask has been used before, and abruptly. At Tienanmen Square, everyone from Chinese farmers to students still held a child-like trust in the People's Liberation Army, composed of ordinary people like them.

"Surely, the army never will fire on its own people," many demonstrators reassured others.

Imagine their surprise-- suddenly to be fired upon by the same army. It was an action so pitiless, not even ambulances and stretcher-bearers could enter the square to retrieve dead and dying PRC citizens, calling to them for aid.

Liu Xiaobo is a powerful, eloquent symbol of the democratic spirit of Tienanmen rising, once again. Clearly, Beijing has not killed the desire of the Chinese people for democracy.

Beijing may make an example of Liu Xiaobo, but his example is pure, uncompromising martyrdom-- the best recruiting poster a movement could have.

And if Liu Xiaobo represents anything about popular opinion among the Chinese people, the undercurrent of discussion and debate for democracy in China and even Beijing, itself, continues stronger than ever.

To buttress its police-state reaction to protest and criticism, Beijing vainly attempts to shut down access to the global internet, where the world community freely engages in frank and openly-expressed opinion, discussion and news exchange.

Still cooperating with Beijing to maintain a digital great wall of censorship are US firms Yahoo and Microsoft. These "patriotic" US firms buckled under PRC pressure and agreed to act as censors against the Chinese people-- if only Beijing would give them access to the PRC market.

Today, the official Beijing hypocrisy about democratic values vs. actual practice continues, unabated. This hypocrisy also continues full-blown with Microsoft and Yahoo, who have offered no support to the Chinese people, other than vague references to global engagement. After all, Yahoo and Microsoft profits are at stake.

In the case of Liu Xiaobo, how apropos of Tibet Beijing should cast the same smokescreen to world opinion-- "Believe our ideals," Beijing insisted to G.W. Bush when he attended the Olympic games in 2008-- despite world protests in support of Tibet. "Do not criticize us for what we actually do."

Again, congratulations for Google for corporate virtue and courage.; Reply to this comment

by ToolMangler1 January 12, 2010 10:53 PM EST

Personal note to "Coop" Thanks Man!!

China is so scared of openness and freedom that they refuse to learn from history (Theirs and ours) and continues to try to "force" the people to be blind and deaf to the rest of the world.
This is in Americas best interest because if China were to adopt western openness and freedom, they would dominate the world without firing a shot or invading a single country.

Reply to this comment


by alphaa10000 January 13, 2010 2:44 AM EST: PREDICTING THE UNPREDICTABLE

ToolMangler1 said, "This (censorship) is in Americas best interest because if China were to adopt western openness and freedom, they would dominate the world without firing a shot or invading a single country."
---

Carnegie's Keidel paper predicts the PRC will eventually secure position as the leading global economy-- with or without its Great Wall of Digital Censorship intact. So far as Keidel is concerned, free and democratic engagement with the world is no serious prerequisite to that status.

Yet, Keidel, himself, will insist that he could be wrong-- an occupational hazard of pundts. Even Keidel admits world opinion counts for a great deal, particularly when global collectives are ever more important in trade. Put differently, China could postpone its own economic flowering.

Likewise, for the rest of the world, Chinese openness to the global trade community remains to be demonstrated. PRC openness and democracy means far more than a two-dimensional "coming of age" debutante ball in Beijing. With the PRC annexation of Tibet, and a flood of Han Chinese into Tibet (subjugating Tibetan natives and inspiring protest around the world), Beijing insists on a closed, imperial and dictatorial future for China and its neighbors.

Desperately trying to stay clear of the Chinese issue, Microsoft and Yahoo still believe they can fool the world, if only for the sake of expanding their own profits in China. They, along with American network switching technology giant Cisco, are rushing forward to help the PRC maintain its wall of censorship. Against such corporate involvement and support, the process of opening China will be protracted.

With Cisco technology, in particular-- even without use of search engines of any kind-- Cisco makes it possible for Beijing to track down and silence individual Chinese for daring to speak openly in defense of democracy, and to criticize the government. Cisco has stayed below the press radar, but is far more important, technically, to the PRC digital dictatorship than any other American corporation.

A historically closed China is understandable, considering China's century of colonial exploitation. But China has a much longer imperial past, itself, and in even an earlier time of expansion and general prosperity, China's emperor abruptly reversed course, and decided against opening China to the world.

Squarely against China's almost ingrained policy of isolation is its historic transformation into a fully industrial society. To sustain its success as a trading center, China must also become global in its engagement with other cultures, systems and ideas. That contradiction is puts Beijing under titanic pressure to resolve issues constructively and peacefully, both at home and abroad.

The Chinese contradiction will persist until imperial censorship or democratic openness and globalization of contact becomes the focus of Chinese policy. Beijing can read the future, too. and understands that global access to resources means full, no-barrier cultural and political relations.

Internal, systemic entropy led to the collapse of Soviet communism, not Reagan or his bluster about capitalism. Such abrupt, internal collapse generally marks the end of a closed system, one fragile and incapable of adapting to long-term stress.

And Beijing understands that, too.