For a while now, it has been almost axiomatic that any U.S. business with hope of achieving prominence in the international marketplace had to set up shop in China. The huge and still growing market there, the thinking goes, is too attractive to pass up, even if political repression and human rights concerns present a stumbling block. The profit motive, in other words, is stronger in many instances than the corporate impulse to do the right thing. A recent decision by Google could change that mindset.
A little history is in order. Nearly five years ago, Google, the pre-eminent Internet company, elected to enter the market in China, where economic growth is about 10 percent a year. Google created Google.cn, a site operated from servers in China. That made sense. Locating servers in China made them more accessible to users there.
Google’s entry into China did not come without compromise. The company agreed to accede to the Chinese government’s demand to censor or suppress search results from Web sites it deemed subversive. Such censorship, of course, is part of the Chinese government’s on-going attempt to preserve its power, to control easy access to information and to stifle free speech and any type of dissent. Google accepted those strictures, arguing that a censored version of the company’s search engine was better than none at all.
Whether that argument is self-serving or not is debatable. What’s certain is that the relationship between China and Google subsequently was strained. It finally came unraveled last week. Google, angered by assaults on its Web sites and by repeated hacking of its customers’ G-mail accounts, announced it would stop censorship of search results. Nothing made public to date ties the assaults to the Chinese government, but it’s hardly a secret that Google believes that is the case.
The company’s response to such activities, whatever their origin, was admirable. It is possible that will force China to pull Google’s plug, forcing the company to leave the country. It is possible, too, that the government will establish new round rules that would allow Google to operate in a more open manner. Though talks are on-going, the latter seems unlikely. Whatever, the decision, the debate spawned inside and outside China by Google’s decision is welcome.