Google 'Congress And Hypocrisy'

NRO: Congress' Criticism Of Google Censorship In China Is Suspect

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Ying Ma.

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The indignant condemnations came quickly for Google. Last week, news surfaced that the company was blocking access to certain politically sensitive terms and websites on its new China site. Since then, Congressman Congressman Chris Smith, R-NJ has accused Google — which boasts “Don’t Be Evil” as its corporate motto — of enabling evil. Reporters Without Borders has denounced Google for hypocrisy. Pundits have lambasted Google for kowtowing to a corrupt, authoritarian regime.

But Washington too, knows quite a bit about doing business with this corrupt, authoritarian regime. It was only in 2000 that Congress granted China Permanent Normal Trading Relations (PNTR), which paved the way for China to enter the World Trade Organization and for U.S. businesses to deal more seamlessly with this corrupt, authoritarian regime.

Congress could have rejected a policy of economic engagement with the Chinese Communists. In fact, a slew of human rights and labor groups argued for precisely this throughout the 1990s. But the House and the Senate overwhelmingly rejected the idea, voting 237 to 197 and 83 to 15, respectively, to approve PNTR for China.

Unable to resist China’s vast market potentials itself, or the clear benefits of free trade, Congress is flabbergasted that every high tech and Internet company doing business in China has not taken up the mantle of ending Beijing’s authoritarian rule. The Congressional Human Rights Caucus condemned such companies at a briefing on Internet freedom in China on February 1 and the House Subcommittee on Human Rights plans to do the same at a hearing on the same topic on February 16. Human rights advocates are pressing for legislation establishing a code of conduct for Internet companies working in countries deemed repressive by the State Department’s annual human rights reports.

Google’s effort to make money in the Chinese market now appears positively dirty. The company’s defense that making some information and services available is better than making none available has been scoffed at as a nauseating rationalization.

Ironically, what Google is saying is not so different from what Congress — supported by successive Republican and Democratic administrations — said when it granted China PNTR. After all, the U.S. government concluded then that doing business with the Chinese Communists was an aggregate good for the U.S. economy. It also argued that promoting economic engagement with China, even without promises of political liberalization in return, was better for the Chinese people than doing nothing at all. President George W. Bush, for instance, stated in 2002 that “China’s entry into the WTO will bring other benefits beyond the expected economic benefits” and provide the crucial underpinning for democratic reform.