In an article about the support Google has garnered for opposing cyber attacks and censorship by the Chinese government, the New York Times points out that Google’s announcement this week was not a rash decision:
In December, a Google senior vice president, Jonathan Rosenberg, issued an online manifesto that placed Google’s business and ethical interests squarely behind open information, and against censorship.
“There are forces aligned against the open Internet — governments who control access, companies who fight in their own self-interests to preserve the status quo,” he wrote. “They are powerful, and if they succeed we will find ourselves inhabiting an Internet of fragmentation, stagnation, higher prices, and less competition.”
More pointedly, a Google engineer’s blog announced this week that the company’s popular Gmail service, which was a target of the Chinese hackers, will henceforth employ extra encryption by default.
Those who hope to use Google’s stance as a wedge to pressure China argue that its refusal to cooperate with Chinese censors will prove a watershed.
“Good for Google for naming the elephant in the room,” one Beijing entrepreneur, an American with a deep knowledge of China’s Internet, said in an interview on Thursday. That person, like many others interviewed, declined to be identified for fear that the Chinese government would retaliate. “Who else in the world has moral authority against China? Who else? Only Google, and they just used it. They just shot their bullet.”
Meanwhile, another article in the Times interviews Chinese entrepreneurs and investors who visited the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA about Google’s stance and found a different reaction:
I talked to several Chinese entrepreneurs and venture capitalists who were part of a delegation that coincidentally visited the Googleplex this morning. (Awkward!)
Most thought that the Chinese government wouldn’t budge on censorship and that Google’s threat wouldn’t have much of an impact on the local startup scene. The one China-based CEO who was truly sympathetic to Google’s position didn’t quite seem to grasp how central the notion of free speech was to Google’s mission. He suggested a compromise where Google could “auto-protect” people from making certain searches.
Update: Read more reactions to the Google story:
“Weighing in on Google’s predicament in China” from the China Media Project, in which David Bandurski writes:
Since news came of Google’s possible withdrawal from the Chinese market, we have been inundated with media requests for our views and remarks. Bizarrely, from the perspective of observers who rarely lift their gaze from China’s media terrain, the first question many journalists seem to be asking is whether Google’s move is likely to push the Chinese government into changing its policy on censorship. Say again?
Our answer: No, of course not.
There has never, not since the leadership shakeup following the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989, been any ambiguity among China’s leaders about the fundamental role of the press and of information in China, and about the need to “guide” or control public opinion in order to maintain social and political stability. And over the past several years, Internet controls have moved to center stage in the CCP’s struggle to control public opinion.
There is no bluff to call in Google’s case. China will, as Jonathan Zittrain said on BBC News this morning, “show Google the door.”
Google, for its part, has stated a commitment to its Chinese users, if not to the government’s policies. Chief legal officer David Drummond, whose blog post launched the controversy, told NPR:
“We operate a global website and that website is accessible in China. … You can rest assured that we will do everything we can to serve the Chinese market,” he said. “We do intend to continue to serve the Chinese people … (and) China, which is one of the world’s great nations.”
(Listen to the interview here.)
See also:
– A column by Roger Cohen in the New York Times and an editorial in the Washington Post, by headlined “Google vs. China.”
– A column by Shaun Rein in Forbes, which concludes: “Google’s actions will end up doing little good for either its investors, its partners or, perhaps most important, China’s citizens.”
– “China and Google: Illegal Flower Tribute?” by Evan Osnos
– China Media Project translates an opinion piece about Google from Southern Metropolis News.
