Business At The Price Of Freedom

An anonymous reader writes "The TechZone has an article on how much technology companies setting up shops in China have to kowtow to the Chinese government. All the major search engines have given in to Chinese demands to throttle liberty in exchange for access to the Chinese market and Microsoft has blocked users of its MSN site from using the terms 'freedom,' 'democracy' and other concepts China has designated as dangerous. From the article: 'Most disconcerting are recent reports that Yahoo!'s Hong Kong operation is turning over emails which helped convict a reporter. Journalist Shi Tao was jailed and sentenced to 10 years in prison for "illegally sending state secrets abroad." The secrets that he revealed were information his newspaper received from the state propaganda department about how they could cover the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. He was identified because he had used Yahoo!'s free email service for which Yahoo! turned over log files to authorities that were later tracked back to his computer.'"

Comments

Merely a matter of degree

[fuzzy12345]

Not to underplay the concessions that China forces out of businesses operating there, but...

How about US corporations cooperating with CALEA (all wiretaps, all the time), broadcasters knuckling down on popular entertainment figures for fear of reprisals from the FCC, and ISPs who almost always say "we are cooperating fully with authorities," code for "we're not going to challenge the dodgy search warrant (or the fact that there's none at all), but will turn over subscriber records at the drop of a hat to avoid abusive regulators getting tough on us over other issues if we don't play ball. Other examples, anyone?

Re:Yahoo does this crap.

[Red Flayer]

" If you don't like it, don't use them. You do have a choice, you know."

Sure, we have that choice... for now. But what happens when all available choices are doing the same thing? The only reason a large company would not submit to China's demands is if doing so would make them lose more business elsewhere. The size of the Chinese market and the relative indifference of consumers preclude this.

Assuming that Chinese policy is wrong, wouldn't it be best for China to change their policy? As more and more companies give in to China's demands, their restrictions on free speech on the internet are becoming a foregone conclusion. Simply not using Yahoo isn't going to change Yahoo's policy, nor China's.

If you want change in China, be proactive. Don't just not use Yahoo -- pass the word to people who are unaware. Let Yahoo know how much business they are losing. Investigate who else bends to the Chinese government, boycott and spread the word.

You may feel like you're doing something by not using Yahoo, and you are. But it's not enough. Have you forwarded the article to your non-Slashdot reading friends who might be concerned about speech limitations in China, asking them to boycott Yahoo?

Have you contacted your legislators about this, to make them aware that you are concerned? Whether or not government can or will do anything about it, public officials need to know.

Here's contact info for US Congresspeople:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

You should also contact your state legislators -- I could see Massachusetts (for example) disallowing Yahoo use in government offices if enough residents do so.

Have you written a letter to Yahoo demanding change, explaining why you are boycotting them and organizing others to do so?

Here's a link to Yahoo's management team bios:
http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/executives/index.htm l

Here's a link to Yahoo's board of directors:
http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/executives/board.htm l

Yahoo's address is:
701 First Ave Sunnyvale CA 97809

It's not only the government

[DrIdiot]

Half of it is the government, but half of it is the people.

I'm an American born Chinese whose parents are from Taiwan. I have friends who are Chinese from China who've moved here, and I'll be damned if all of them oppose the Chinese government.

Sure, you've got a large number of people in China who want democracy, who want elected officials and a say in government. But you've also got a large number of people that are either so caught up in nationalism to notice or sincerely don't believe it's that bad. For a change from totalitarianism to democracy to occur, the idea of change has to be internally ubiquitous.

When you've got a Chinese telling me that the Taiwanese form of government is worse than the Chinese form of government, we've got a problem here. Although the Taiwanese form of government may not be perfect, especially in its beginnings, at least officials are elected by the people, at least it's a multi-party system, and wow, there isn't this rampant totalitarian censorship and control exerted over the people.

When you've got people pointing to the Chinese legislature as a legitimate form of legislature, that's a problem. A one-party legislature is not legitimate, it's a pathetic excuse.

When you've got people saying that there should be a balance between control and freedom (which isn't false at all - for instance, you don't have the freedom to murder) and pointing to CHINA as an example of this, we have a problem. Especially when that same person cites the PATRIOT Act as a problem in the United States.

When you've got people failing to recognize that China is rampant with censorship and has a foreign policy that's worse as ours (Tibet, anyone?), that's a problem. They simply fail to recognize this as a human rights violation. Yet when we bomb Iraqi civilians, they're completely opposed to it, citing human rights. So when the United States kills people it's wrong but when China does it's not? Bullshit. Nationalism at it's peak.

These aren't conservative or totalitarianistic-thinking people either. In America's terms, they'd be considered liberal. It's just when it comes to the subject of China, they're automatically in support.

And it's so hard to show them how absurd this mode of thinking is.

Right now, I have little confidence in the Chinese people to change their government. I also have little confidence in foreign nations to have the ability to change the Chinese government. Not only that, I oppose any attempt by any nation other than China itself to change the Chinese government. Change must come from within. And it doesn't seem like it's coming anytime soon. Tienmen Square shut dissenters up pretty damn good.

You can't blame Yahoo or Google for complying with the Chinese government. If they don't comply, guess what? They're going to be blocked from China. Lot of good that'll do then, right? All those websites about democracy are going to do the Chinese real good if they can't even get there. At least with search query censorship, a clever search may yield good results. When blocking the entire search engine, that whole mode of finding information is lost.