June 19, 2005
Part of the Internet's magic is the freedom it bestows to travel as far as your mind can take you. But not if you're in China, where the totalitarian government is leery of the Internet and hostile to the merest mention of such ideas as freedom.
No surprise there. What is a shock is that several huge U.S. companies are helping China muzzle free expression.
Software giant Microsoft has agreed to block certain words -- democracy, freedom and human rights among them -- by users on parts of its new Chinese Internet portal. According to news reports, the words trigger this message: "This item should not contain forbidden speech, such as profanity."
Freedom, profane?
What's actually profane is a company that built its fortune on the freedom provided by the American system helping a repressive regime censor such ideas. Sadder still is that Microsoft has company among other U.S. tech concerns that should know better:
• Yahoo China signed a pledge of "self-discipline" in 2002, vowing to refrain from posting "pernicious information that may jeopardize state security."
• Google launched a news search engine in China last year, but searchers in China get a different list of news links than someone doing a similar search in the USA. Missing links include the BBC and Voice of America, which carry reports not to China's liking.
The importance of this should not be underestimated. The Internet and capitalism were supposed to jump-start democracy in former communist regimes. These actions suggest a different future: One in which companies and dictators share benefits in suppressing democratic communications.
The companies offer terse explanations.
A Google spokesman says it has removed sources that wouldn't be accessible to users in China anyway to create "the best possible news search experience." Microsoft and Yahoo spokesmen say companies must obey laws and regulations of the countries where they do business.
True, up to a point. But companies with traditions of defending free speech have rejected such compromises. For instance, Time, USA TODAY, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have policies against bowing to censorship. Time Asia was banned for three years in China for running afoul of censors with a story on the Falun Gong [group].
Apologists argue that U.S. companies would be locked out of China if they didn't cooperate, closing China off from outside influence. But the Chinese government needs them as much as they need the Chinese. A little hard bargaining might go a long way.
Ultimately, censorship might prove futile. Internet use in China has quadrupled since 2000. There's no way even China's censors can keep 94 million users away from ideas the government finds objectionable.
The American experience is that ideas are impossible to quell. Companies that have flourished in that free system would do better to stand up to censors than to join them.