Rationalization Smashed
Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Cisco are making deals with the devil - helping the Communist Chinese government extend its total control over the Internet, to prevent it from being used as a means to undermine its total control over Chinese society.
David Kopel is not amused:
Today, the Financial Times reports on a letter which a leading Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, has sent to Yahoo. Having spent time in prison for speaking the truth about China's ruling Communist Party, Liu "says Yahoo has enough market clout not to need to toady to authorities." He explains the corporate-communist deal: coporations make profits at the expense of human rights; the communists are given Internet control, and new means to squelch dissent. Thus:
“The collusion of these two kinds of ugliness means that there is no way for western investment to promote freedom of speech in China, and that in fact it greatly increases the ability of the Communist party to blockade and control the internet,” he writes.
“You are helping the Communist party maintain an evil system of control over freedom of information and speech,” he writes.
Simply put, there appears to be no way to be an ethical Internet company in China today, just as there was no way to be an ethical supplier of spy equipment to the USSR or Nazi Germany.
It's fascinating, though, the way big-corporate PR has been putting a soft face on the PRC for the past decade.
Corporations are generally supposed to maximize their profits, but there is a point at which a particular form of profit maximization becomes unethical. It's ethical for companies to make barbed wire, but it's not ethical for the company to sell barbed wire to a regime which the company knows will use the barbed wire to build concentration camps.
The American Internet companies which do business in China are assisting the creation of the world's most sophisticated architecture of repression. No company should make profits at such a terrible cost to human rights. After American companies left, the Chinese tyrants would undoubtedly find other, inferior, foreign companies to provide Internet services and assist with the suppression of liberty. It would be better, though, if China's architecture of repression were built by inferior, less efficient companies, rather than by the best minds of the world's best computer companies.
If expelled from China, an ethical company could further assist human rights by setting up major offices in free Taiwan.
Until the State Department made their life a living hell...
Posted by Mitch at
October 18, 2005 06:39 PM
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Rupert Murdock, of Fox news and other media properties has just been invited back into China after a 4 year suspension. He seems to have learned his lesson, according to WSJ today, which capped the article with (paraphrasing) "...as one dictator to another".
Time/Warner, despite the owner's personal relationships with the Chinese Leadership, isn't having a very good time in China. This is because while Murdock is highly centralized and can control the message, Time/Warner gives more independence to its affiliates.
Is it time to bash FOX and praise Time Magazine?
Posted by: Bill Haverberg at October 18, 2005 03:54 PMMitch,
Thank you for pointing out the duplicity of the business elite. They crow about bringing down the Soviets, and then get in bed with the regime that is FAR FAR more dangerous. Communism hasn't died folks, it's alive and well in China, and it's our redirected tax dollars (the tax cuts for the rich) being invested as capital expenditures to bring China along VERY quickly.
Now I know the "idea" is to mold China, yeah, you go with that.. it's only been tried for about ohhh, I don't know, 1500 years, and failed EVERY LAST time. The Chinese are neither fools nor puppets, they have their own agenda, but because some folks see some fast bucks to be made off of cheap labor, well screw capitalism, free markets, national security, fiscal policy, trade imbalance, this is about the almighty BUCK, bucko.
Luther said, "He who worships at the altar of the stomach cannot have two Gods." I seriously question the supposed faith of those who worship profit before moral responsibility.. but hey, it's the left that is anti-Christian, right?
PB
Posted by: PB at October 18, 2005 05:55 PMPB, there are so many factual errors and mistatements in your post it's hard to know where to start.
Posted by: chriss at October 18, 2005 11:02 PMChina's communist regime is very, very bad but it is hard to argue that it is FAR, FAR worse than the USSR. Mao killed 30+ million people during his "Great Leap Forward" but was a piker when compared to Stalin. And yes it is right and good to 'crow' about defeating Soviet communism; we did, and millions of people are living better lives as a result.
Now, to China: we've tried for 1500 years???? Tried what??? For most of that 1500 years China didn't exactly encourage engagement with the outside world. Life in China for the average citizen is immeasurably better today than 40 or 50 years ago. I have a business associate in China. 28 years old, he owns his own factory and trading company. His parents are illiterate peasant farmers. His grandparents all died of starvation with the taste of tree bark on their lips during the aforementioned Great Leap Forward. He creates employment for hundreds, jobs that pay more than what doctors and professors are paid by the state. What has made these improvements possible? Commerce. Engagement. His factory is out-competing Korean companies. Why? Because Korea has moved up the tech ladder. Does he take jobs away from Americans? That's another issue for another day. Suffice it to say that his products sell in US stores for 3 to 5 times what he gets paid for them, so the vast majority of value-added economic activity revolving around his products takes place in the US.
China is following the same trajectory as Japan, Korea and the other Asian Tigers. Increased standard of living, increased skill, increased protection of intellectual property (as they develop some of their own they see the value in encouraging and protecting it), improved environmental conditions (don't tell me "there's more cars, they used to bike everywhere" until YOU bike everywhere. Affluent countries protect their air and water (see also: Fall of Soviet Communism, Improved Environmental Conditions in Former Eastern Bloc)), and improved education.
In your world, what is the 'morally responsible' approach to China? Disengagement? Chaos and starvation on a massive scale? Turn China (back) into a really big North Korea???
The communist government in China has proven that it can hold -- and even expand and consolidate -- power during times of extreme economic hardship. Ultimately they will not be able to survive prosperity. They are increasingly viewed by the young as a leech and a drain on the country's potential.
2 points of clarification:
Yes, I do have first hand knowledge of how the Chinese government is viewed by many of its citizens.
Yes, I hold the same economic engagement stance toward Cuba and believe that our policy with regard to Castro is wrong-headed.
Now, with regard to the specific issue at hand, Google et. al. should not profit from business that clearly allows the ChiComms to maintain power by withholding information from its citizens. Commerce and engagement should -- and has -- increase access to information, thereby giving citizens access to other points of view.
So yes, PB, I agree with you even though your post set a new record for misinformed broad brush stupidity.
Sorry this is so long, I lacked the time to make it shorter.
I was in China this past summer. Something funny we noticed was how the TV stations would often have combined English/Chinese subtitles on screen. Very often, the subtitles and sound would both disappear, for instance while watching CNN news or even funnier, once we were watching one of those That's Entertainment type movies, and the song "You're A Grand Old Flag" came on...all of a sudden, no sound, no subtitles. We also enjoyed all the state-sponsored programming. Everyone in China is so very happy!!!!
Posted by: Elizabeth at October 19, 2005 11:14 AM