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Ballmer Defends Microsoft In China
An anonymous reader writes "Mr. Ballmer has recently posted on the official Microsoft blog discussing future business in China and defending Microsoft's stance of cooperating with the government even as other large IT companies have begun making public condemnations (Google and Twitter being the most prominent). Couple this with Bill Gate's speech on China's censorship being not all that bad (a speech very well received by Chinese media) and you've got people wondering: Is Microsoft aiming to take Google's place in China?"
you've got people wondering: Is Microsoft aiming to take Google's place in China?"
Of course they are! What a dumb question.
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Of course. Microsoft wants to take Google's place everywhere.
In China specifically, Microsoft can't pack up and leave like Google did. China's already a big target for their anti-piracy efforts Their only option is to play nice with the government and get cooperation, no matter how bad it really is.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Well, that's true. After all, they're only obeying orders, and so they bear absolutely no personal or corporate responsibility for the consequences of their actions. That's how it works, isn't it? Right? Right?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Microsoft's business tactics and China's public policies have some overlap. Microsoft probably sees little wrong with how the Chinese government runs the country as shown by the Gates and Ballmer statements. They resemble each other.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
"nothing at all like the situation was in the USSR". Yeah, right. There is no similarity whatsoever between the USSR and the PRC in the restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and freedom of association. Not the tiniest bit of similarity. As different as night and day. Chinese censorship is not at all like Soviet censorship. Brin must be certifiably insane if he perceives a parallel between the two.
At some point along that line, it no longer becomes immoral to remain in business, even if you are aware that some of your products are being used in an utterly despicable manner.
The question is not whether Microsoft should remain in business. It's whether it should do business with a government that will use your products in a repressive manner. A wagonmaker could probably sell his wagons to someone who does not kill its own citizens for their ethnicity and still remain in business. But here is the crux. It won't quite make as much money. And the pure lust for profit is what is objectionable here.
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What about when the order comes in for a wagon specialy designed for the purpose? China demands that they change their product in a way that everyone in the company has to recognize is unethical, but everyone just goes along with it and claims they're just following orders.
What corporate responsibility? Because it seems to me there's a lot of talk about corporate responsibility, but when it comes to it, the powers that be don't really care what a corporation does so long as they don't screw the shareholders/government. Otherwise, when a corporation comes into violation with the law (and assuming the defendants can afford to holdout for the duration of the trial), the most they'll get is some nominal fine that sounds big to the average person, but is really no more than a slap on the wrist.
All this justification crap is just fluff. Here's the real reason Microsoft is in China: Microsoft wants to make money. China has money to spend. Therefore, Microsoft will cooperate with China so it can get some of it's money.
That's it. Surprising, I know. Honestly, Microsoft could go on about how it'd give every Chinese person a fucking ice-cream shitting unicorn and it'd come to the same effect. So long as the shareholders are happy, it doesn't really matter what they say to the public.
They'd much rather have a secure, stable society than appease to every little whim.
This is a fallacy. Authoritarian government do not promote secure, stable societies. They repress. They oppress. They don't allow people with grievances to air them or to hold the government accountable for their actions.
Authoritarian governments CREATE instability because they eliminate the safety valves that prevent small grievances from becoming revolts.
Thanks for making it so clear that there is no hope for self-regulation at all. The only hope to keep companies behaving even the slightest therefor must come from government control. Nothing like a honest capitalist to make clear the need for government interference.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
MS is NOT selling its soul in China for revenue. You cannot sell what you do not have. Ballmer and Gates have no morals. Oh, they are not evil, that takes a commitment. They just have absolutely no moral compass whatsoever. Look at how Bill Gates does his charity work, always with an angle to somehow better MS. It is the way he thinks.
And before you defend him, remember that is a LOT easier to have morals if you are rich. If MS pulled out of China what would happen to these two guys? Absolutely nothing. They ain't doing this to survive, they are doing it for yet another billion whose difference they will never ever notice.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Google did the right thing, eventually. At the end of the day we are more than employees. We are citizens that benefit from freedoms hard earned. It is the utmost height of hypocrisy to then turn around and pretend there is nothing wrong with assisting the repression of people in foreign countries. One day, China may very well be the powerhouse of the world, western corporations' eagerness at supplying tools to assist Chinese repression will then come back to haunt us. Our failure to stand up against this hypocrisy will then have transformed into a failure to fight for our democratic rights.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Realistically, if you're making the gas chambers then you have decided your moral position by the business you are in. If you are making the actual tools of killing then there's a case that you have a moral duty to take care over how they will be used. But the further you get from that then the more your moral responsibility is diluted, to the point where it's lost in the noise.
And that's exactly the issue, here. Most people likely wouldn't care if China was somehow using existing Microsoft services to send disinformation and propaganda to their citizens. It's the fact that China is saying, "Please modify your existing software so that it sends disinformation and propaganda to our citizens," and Microsoft is saying, "Ok, sure. What kind of censorship would you like us to make for you?"
Regarding the wagonmakers analogy -- it's upsetting, but not a big deal if Nazis are using a wagonmaker's wagons to transport Jews to a fiery death. That's not the wagonmaker's fault, necessarily. What Microsoft is doing, though, is making a Jew-transporting wagon that is engineered for the purpose of sending Jews to their fiery death.
You have hit the nail on the head. The Chinese idea of law is entirely alien to westerners. My favorite quote is from (as I remember it) Thomas Friedman at the NYTimes. Asking too many questions the official finally went to failsafe mode: "China is a country of law." This is true, but you must understand the crucial difference. Laws in China are not based on cases brought before a judge and/or jury. Laws in China are decided by rich plutocrats who control the legislative (communist party) the executive (communist party) and the judicial (communist party) branches of the government. In the old days (10 years ago) every company or any other organization had a president, who was any old figurehead. The second in command, the vice-president, had a seedy little office down the hall. That person was the Communist Party member. Their job was two-fold. First, they controlled the money. No money came in or went out without their consent. Second they controlled the "stamp". The stamp was the mark of an official decision. Similar to the signature of a president or CEO it makes things legal decisions. Nowadays even that flimsy excuse for a veil is gone. The party membership owns everything, decides everything and controls everything. They are the law and they are powerful and frightened. Read the news with these things in mind and you will understand China much better.
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