Google 'Congress And Hypocrisy'

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

(National Review Online)  Unfortunately for Google, many do not seem to remember the grand bargain the U.S. government struck with China in 2000. Lawmakers and human-rights groups only recall that the information revolution was supposed to come crashing down on China’s antiquated instruments of authoritarian control. After all, in lobbying for China’s entry into the WTO, President Bill Clinton promised Congress that the Internet would serve as a harbinger of democracy in China.

Yet the Communist party in China has refused to roll over upon the Internet’s arrival: it has acquired sophisticated technology (including some from American high-tech companies) to censor Internet content while intimidating both Western and domestic companies to engage in self-censorship. Washington, shocked that authoritarian leaders will do what they must to survive, is utterly scandalized.

Frustrated with the resilience of Chinese authoritarian rule, members of Congress have anointed Western businessmen (without their consent) as freedom fighters and have declared irrelevant their responsibility to maximize shareholder value. Congressman Tim Ryan, D-OH, asserted in a statement that “American citizens and lawmakers have every right to demand that U.S. companies advance freedom rather than oppression.” Similarly, Congressman Chris Smith, R-NJ, instructed Google, “Human rights should trump profits.”

The unpleasant reality is that doing business with an authoritarian regime is inherently dirty. In exchange for market access, American companies like Google must make the necessary compromises to operate in a police state.

These compromises are not pretty, but they are not necessarily corrupt. The Chinese Internet, with no small help from American capital and know-how, has become one of the most exciting mediums in Chinese society. Though terms such as freedom and democracy are censored, the Internet nevertheless makes known the Chinese people’s thoughts on and responses to everything from the pain of unemployment to the exhilaration of entrepreneurship, from the frustration of urban pollution to the confusion of Internet romance.

No one knows if the partial opening of China to Western information and values will ultimately deliver China into freedom’s sweet embrace. Google is hoping that it will.

Google may or may not be right. This makes no difference to human-rights purists who do not believe in subordinating immediate human-rights concerns to long term or different sorts of gains. It is, however, highly hypocritical of Congress to complain about this, for Congress too has made, much like Google, the same compromise with, and holds out the same hope for, the same police state.


Ying Ma is a National Research Initiative Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Between 2000 and 20001, she managed corporate communications for Sina.com, the first Mainland Chinese company to be listed on the Nasdaq stock market.