Epoch Times Washington, D.C. staff

May 29, 2006

A poster advertising U.S. Internet search engine Yahoo in a Beijing subway station. There is an international furor over the actions of Yahoo and other U.S. web giants in buckling to Chinese censorship pressure. (Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)

The American government, university researchers, and others are taking greater interest in U.S. companies' compliance with the Chinese Communist regime's demands for the right to do business in China.

Legislation to stop American business from caving into Communist China's demands may be inevitable, according to "The China Dilemma for U.S. Firms" by Professor James L. Heskett of Harvard Business School.

In a hearing held in April by the International Relations Committee on "Human Rights in China: Improving or Deteriorating Conditions?" Congressman Christopher Smith (R - NJ) asked if companies should be instrumental in the continued existence of tyrannical regimes, by collaborating with immoral and brutal members of such regimes. He further asked whether companies who comply with laws that ignore existing international human rights laws should be exonerated, because they followed the letter of a particular country's law?

The so-called lawful business activities of American companies in China "violate international law and the right to freedom of expression as defined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration [of Human Rights, a resolution of the General Assembly of the U.N.]" according to Lucie Morillon of Reporters Without Borders.

Caving in, Standing Firm or Leaving

Companies have the option to "Comply, Resist or Leave," said Heskett. The decision is not easy today, as it was not easy during the Nazi Holocaust and South African apartheid.

Companies appear to have chosen compliance. Among the most frequently named collaborators with Communist China are Microsoft, MSN, Yahoo, Google, Cisco, Motorola, and Nokia.

Companies that do business with China's Communist regime provide the know-how to keep Mainland China's citizens from knowing the truth, to find those with dissenting views, and to persecute those it believes to be a threat to its power.

Cisco is the father of the Chinese firewall that allows the Chinese Communist regime the ability to build the biggest censorship system the world has even known.

"I'm sure they didn't intend to end giving the technology that the police force would use on an everyday basis to round up Chinese dissidents and Falun Gong practitioners and Catholics of a practice outside of the state faith," said Ethan Gutmann, the author of "Losing New China: A Story of American Commerce, Desire and Betrayal," during an interview with New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV) reporter Jack Wang.

Motorola has provided China high-tech Advanced Location Tracing, which gives the Chinese regime the ability to find an individual that wishes to hide from the arm of China's police.

According to Gutmann, Sun Microsystems is selling China "surveillance equipment that allows for fingerprint recognition, facial recognition, which can be used in bathrooms and waiting areas."

At the hearing in April Congressman Smith remarked, "The most essential pillars that prop up totalitarian regimes are the secret police and propaganda. Yet, for the sake of market share and profits, leading US companies like Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft have compromised the integrity of their product and their duties as responsible citizens." U.S. companies have bent over backwards to help the Chinese Communist Party in power.

Becoming Corrupted and Un-American

According to Sharon Hom, the executive director of Human Rights in China, "Compliance with domestic law is an indefensible justification for undermining human rights."

Companies that provide the Chinese Communist regime with items that will help it hold on to power are given special treatment. The market opens up mysteriously. For example, Cisco captured 750f China's router market, according to Gutmann.

American companies are betraying American interests. In the past, "if the Chinese Communist Party wanted technology, they had to keep sending spies over here," said Gutmann. Now, American companies, hungry for a piece of the Chinese market pie can't get over there fast enough. The morals and ethics they espouse here in the U.S. are irrelevant.

Today, Motorola operates 25 research and development plants, which are equally modern, if not more sophisticated than the ones it has established in the US. The research is immediately used by the Ministry of Science and Technology, for their fourth generation military communication project, and for the benefit of the People's Liberation Army, according to Gutmann. To spread the blame a little, we note that IBM, Honeywell, GE and Lucent have provided their share of know-how to this project. Gutmann, who had lived in China, became deeply disillusioned not just with the Chinese, but also with foreign companies' acceptance of the Chinese Communist's way of doing business, the Chinese art of manipulating American businessman, and U.S. government policies towards China.

The free world's information flow is also affected. "Microsoft on December 30, 2005 shut down the blog of Zhao Jing because the content of Zhao's blog on MSN spaces was offensive to the PRC," said Congressman Smith. The blog was closed at the same time to Internet surfers outside of China.

"It not only censored Chinese access to information, but American access to information, a step it has only recently pulled back from." The excuse also used by Yahoo and MSN, "[being] committed to comply with local laws, norms and industry practices in China."

Not only is Communist China corrupting Americans, it has learned America's techniques, which it uses to manipulate Americans, and America is buying it all, without blinking an eye. We need to ask ourselves, what prevents these companies from applying the methods learned in China in their home countries?

"My feeling is [that] American business, by compromising the values and business ethics that govern their behavior back here in the States--and even in some cases their personal ethics, we are changing the way China looks at America," said Guttmann.

Who Should Be in the Driver's Seat?

Compliance is not the only option open to American companies in dealing with China.

Americans, if they stood their ground could be in the driver's seat and the Chinese would back down on a lot of demands.

China demanded encryption source codes rights from Microsoft in 2000.

Microsoft stood its ground at the time by "building an industry-wide international coalition" and warning that it would just pack up and leave.

China capitulated.

Gutmann predicts that although European companies could take over, should American companies leave, they would not be first rate and earnings would suffer. Chinese companies would not be any better.

The Consequences of Compliance

America was not involved in the Tiananmen Square massacre. But, today, America can no longer say that they hold no responsibility for what is going on in China. This time it would be much worse than Tiananmen.

"The Chinese people would be going up not only against the Chinese Communist Party and not only against the security forces--the state security, the PSP [Public Security Special Police, the paramilitary police used by the Chinese regime to put down protests] and so on, but they would be going up against Nokia, Motorola, Cisco and Microsoft. And that is a very dangerous situation for American companies to be in," said Gutmann.

But, that's not all. America has much more to worry about, should China catch up with America's technology, a threat that is very close at hand, and why? "American companies are now moving research and development into China on a vast scale. Most of this research and development has military implications and security implications. This technology is not monitored and is going straight to the Peoples Liberation Army."

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