GOOGLE v. THE GREAT FIREWALL OF CHINA

Last week, the dreaded Scott Brown outcome in Massachusetts and the worst Supreme Court disaster since Dread Scott were bad news enough. Less noticed beneath the headlines is the war of words between Google and the Spy Republic of China.  Is the argument between Google and China about censoring free speech, or part of a larger global strategy? Hardly comic relief, the story is worth following for hidden implications.

Background. Although China has one fifth of the world’s population, less than 10% of its 1.3 billion people use online search engines. Before Google entered the China market, the Chinese government crippled Internet access resulting in excessive downtime, slow response times, and crashed browsers. To better serve this market, Google created a local presence in China and launched Google.cn in January 2006. In exchange for approval by the Chinese government, Google agreed to remove certain information from their search results. From the beginning, Google’s decision stirred controversy. In agreeing to the terms of the Chinese government, did Google violate its own credo, which states: “Do no evil?” Was Google acting as an accomplice in the abuse of human rights? Or acting as a change agent in the spread of democracy?

The Global Economy. Economic globalization and interdependence have a moral objective. According to theory, countries that are economically interdependent do not go to war, and countries that engage in free trade are more likely to turn democratic … so goes the argument. Thus, the best way to remove incentives for conflict between adversaries is to co-opt them into a global matrix of free trade.

For decades, these assumptions guided American international trade policy and justified Google’s decision to enter the Chinese market. “While removing search results is inconsistent with Google’s mission,” a company spokesperson said, “providing no information is more inconsistent with our mission.” Although China remains closed in many ways, Google argues, access to information will help open the country in future years. Even Google’s archrival agrees. Microsoft founder Bill Gates defended Google’s decision, arguing that the Internet “is contributing to Chinese political engagement.”

Nevertheless, several American-based companies (including Cisco, Microsoft, and Yahoo) have been selling online and information technology products to the Chinese government, which uses the same technologies to enforce censorship and conduct online surveillance. In at least one instance, Yahoo released information about a dissident blogger, Shi Tao, whom the Chinese government arrested and imprisoned with the aid of Yahoo-supplied information. The online community and human rights watchers have reacted bitterly to what they call “the export of censorship and human rights abuse technology” by American firms.

Arrogant Overreach. The controversy over trade in “human rights abuse technology” might have smoldered just below the surface of headline news until China made this audacious play:

Exactly 4 years to the month since Google started operations, Chinese hackers penetrated Google’s e-mail servers in a politically motivated attempt to gather intelligence on known or possible dissidents. It is one thing to censor search engine content; hacking into company-owned systems to steal proprietary data ups the ante on a long festering argument. Stealing customer data is a twofold evil ... providing Google with more than ample justification to withdraw from the Chinese market.

Please note this regrettable irony: The U.S. government may have aided these hackers inadvertently. In order to comply with government search warrant requests on user data, Google created a backdoor access to e-mail account information. Nothing unusual here, many Western governments have passed laws giving law enforcement new powers of Internet surveillance. Chinese hackers subverted the access system Google had put in place to comply with U.S. intercept orders.

The surveillance infrastructure that aids totalitarianism around the world has been exported by Western businesses. Nokia and Siemens built Iran’s surveillance system, and American companies helped put in place China’s police state.

Late last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named China, among other countries, as places where there has been "a spike in threats to the free flow of information" over the past year. In addition to China, she named Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. In response, Beijing accused the United States of damaging relations between the two countries by imposing "information imperialism" on China.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu defended China's policies regarding the Worldwide Web, saying the nation's Internet regulations were in line with Chinese law and did not hamper the cyber activities of the world's largest online population. "Everyone with technical knowledge of computers knows that just because a hacker used an IP address in China, the attack was not necessarily launched by a Chinese hacker," said Zhou Yonglin, deputy operations director of the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team, in an interview carried in a number of Chinese newspapers.

The Iran Connection. The Chinese response did not end with denials of cyber attacks by alleged hackers close to the Chinese government. Within days, the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of China's Communist Party, accused the United States of mounting a cyber army of social media such as Twitter and YouTube to foment unrest in Iran.

In other words, efforts by the West to pressure Iran into compliance on nuclear arms treaties and human rights abuses would be met with diplomatic resistance by China.

This is not the first, or the last, time China attempted to stymie efforts by the West to address human rights abuses around the world. From Myanmar to Iran, China has always asserted a “keep-your-nose-out-of-internal-affairs” policy with respect to human abuses because, to acknowledge any such abuses, would eventually point blame directly at Bejing.

Perhaps it is time to admit one more American international trade and foreign policy failure. Trade with China has resulted in the export of our manufacturing capacity, the outsourcing of our labor force, a woeful imbalance in trade and sovereign debt, and the impoverishment of our people. Perhaps it is time to face facts: Our international trade policy as a change agent is self-delusional, self-destructive, and unworthy of our values.