MEANINGFUL, THOUGH IMPERFECT:

Search engine giants 'enabling dictatorship' (FOSTER KLUG, 2/16/06, The Scotsman)

Representative Tom Lantos, the full committee's senior Democrat, told the company officials that they had amassed great wealth and influence "but apparently very little social responsibility".

"Your abhorrent actions in China are a disgrace," Mr Lantos said at the hearing.

"I simply don't understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."

Representatives from the companies attempted to defend themselves before the committee hearing, but a Google official acknowledged that working in China's internet market "has been a difficult exercise".

Google's Elliot Schrage said: "The requirements of doing business in China include self-censorship - something that runs counter to Google's most basic values and commitments as a company."

Still, he said, Google decided to enter China because it thought it "will make a meaningful, though imperfect, contribution to the overall expansion of access to information in China".

Democracy's Slow Boat to China (Ying Ma, February 15, 2006, Asian Wall Street Journal )

When the U.S. Congress granted Permanent Normal Trade Relations to China in 2000, proponents of expanded trade predicted that China's ongoing economic opening would ultimately lead to political liberalization. The Internet was supposed to be a crucial engine spurring such liberalization. Then President Bill Clinton observed, "[B]y letting our high-tech companies in to bring the Internet and the information revolution to China, we will be unleashing forces that no totalitarian operation rooted in the last century's industrial society can control."

Some five years later, Beijing has managed to upgrade its censorship techniques to adapt to the Internet age, intimidating both political dissidents and American companies alike. The Chinese government's success at political repression has reminded policymakers that at least in the short run, Beijing may have found a way to persist in its authoritarian, repressive ways while devouring cash and technological know-how from the West.

At the moment, these problems are overshadowed by congressmen's far greater interest in seeking legislation to limit U.S. business collaboration with Chinese Internet censorship. The most sensible legislative proposal currently comes from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Commission, which has suggested that Congress prohibit U.S. companies, in the absence of formal legal action, from disclosing information about Chinese users or authors of online content to the Chinese government. Such a solution allows U.S. Internet companies to continue to compete in China while easing the pressure to succumb to demands from the Chinese police state.

As long as the legislation the Congress passes is fairly minimal, this will have been an almost perfect exercise in liberalization theater. Google and company probably do advance the cause of freedom--by making knowledge more available--in China, but they need to always be pushing the envelope to get more info out to users. The best way to guarantee that they dpo so is to publicly shame them here and to give them the image of government pressure to use in their negotiations with the PRC.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 16, 2006 8:10 AM