Washington Post: China’s Information Dam

From a Washington Post editorial:

Foreign companies are drawn to China’s market of more than 200 million Internet users. But the conditions of doing business in China are complicated: Content providers must agree to abide by China’s draconian restrictions on the kind of results they can show. Both Bing and Google’s sites acknowledge that results have been removed. Their justification is simple: If we don’t do it, someone else will.

But this is not necessarily true. In 1996, state news agency Xinhua tried to place restrictions on breaking financial news, moving to prohibit all stories not vetted by its propaganda machine. A concerted pushback by the international media and other stockholders prevailed against the initiative.

This time, the State Department and industry groups are pushing back against China’s Green Dam censorship software. They must stand firm, and search engines should join them. The industry can offer China better alternatives to meet its avowed aim of limiting access to pornography. But closing access to sexual-health Web sites is both wrong and dangerous. Fining people who fail to meet government criteria for the information they post could have devastating repercussions. And enhancing China’s ability to persecute those who seek freedom is not forgivable.

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