I dove into a listserv discussion of google’s recent launch in China and the controversy that has ensued. A good example of why people are upset is this:
Image search for “Tiananmen” via google.com
Image search for “Tiananmen” via google.cn
In the face of these concerns, I had this to say (which I felt was worth reposting here):
not to be contrarian, but ..
I think the filtering of google in china is an unfortunate situation,
but I frankly don’t blame google and agree with their rationale.
The purpose of a boycott is to affect the entity being boycotted. The
aim of the bus boycott in Montgomery was to force the civic leaders
there to reevaluate their stands on civil rights issues. (from
wikipedia: “The boycott proved extremely effective, with enough riders
lost to the city transit system to cause serious economic distress.”)
On the other end of the spectrum, conservative “values” groups often
stage boycotts of companies (e.g. Disney) that are “too accepting” of
lifestyles they disagree with. They do this in the hopes that the
boycott will result in a change in corporate policy.
I can’t imagine that withholding services from China would make one
bit of difference in the degree to which their government treats its
people. So to stage a boycott when your efforts will, by any measure,
have zero effect is pointless.
There is the argument that by presenting only part of the truth, you
are presenting a lie. But there are any number of search engines
already in china that filter their results. So the lie is already
being told and there is nothing any one company can do about it. And
even if all of them banded together and refused to offer filtered
results, the chinese government would clearly just call their bluff.
Totalitarian governments do not relinquish control quite that easily.
The American entity with the best shot of changing china’s policy is
the federal government itself, which doesn’t seem particularly
interested in doing that with any kind of aggressiveness.
Is it wrong, on principle, to participate in this lie? I think that
opening up google to the chinese, even if it is filtered, is an
improvement over not having google at all. As assorted efforts to
limit porn on the internet have demonstrated, filters are not
foolproof. So with each new search engine the comes online, there is a
slightly better chance that “dangerous” content will slip through.
This may not make much of a difference at all, but it’s better than
nothing. At the very least, everyone searching for “non-dangerous”
speech can enjoy the benefit of better results. I’d imagine from their
perspective, their lives are tough enough, living under this regime;
it would compound the problem to deny them other services as an
ancillary effect of the regime’s political controls.
The real villain here is the chinese government, not google. They are
the ones oppressing their people, and they will continue to do so
regardless of who opens up what website there.
