Googling China--Censorship vs. Imperialism

When I first heard the news that Google was not going to comply with China’s censorship rules and might consider pulling out of China altogether, I said to myself “Bully for Google!.” I love it when people do things, in spite of the bottom line. But I quickly reminded myself that Google is not a person, it is a publicly traded company and business rules being what they are, what were the business reasons for this action?

How could Google afford to pull out of China—arguably the largest and fastest growing marketplace in the world? Google can put the earth on a tiny screen, but can they really write off all the business in China and still be a growth stock? The answer is not in the first sentence “we are not complying with Chinese censorship,” it is in the second sentence, “we are CONSIDERING pulling out of the Chinese marketplace. OK. So this is posturing, they are not really going to pull out. But aren’t they walking a dangerous edge?

Chinese censorship is anti-Google

Let’s review the “he said, she said.” Google says Chinese censorship is anti-Google. That is a good business reason. Google prides itself on being an impartial search engine, and not retrieving certain kinds of information would be a violation of their mission statement. However there were a host of other issues behind Google’s statement. Google admitted their internal computing resources had been penetrated, data was stolen and claimed the attacks came from China. Or possibly from Google employees in China, or possibly by the Chinese government itself. (Security experts more knowledgeable than I will attest that the penetrations had Chinese government written all over it)

Whether it was the fact that the data belonged to Chinese dissidents or the fact that Google defenses were breached, Google drew a line in the sand.

China denies what Google says—all of it. More importantly, China asserts its national authority can trump American business interests. I am going to take an unpopular position, just for argument’s sake, in the Google China face-off(so don’t send me death threats). What if China thinks information protection laws are just another form of American Imperialism? Data is data, nobody owns it. Isn’t that one of the guiding principles behind Google’s e-publishing effort—“Lets get all the books online so everyone can read them." If that same business does not lock its doors, how can they cry “Thief?”

China is sovereign over American business

To be fair minded, the argument can be made that China should be sovereign over the business rules within its borders. And taking a page from Google, information is BIG BUSINESS. I could go on and on about how the history of the 21st century is all about nationalism, but I don’t need to go there to make my point.

Google vs. China is all about brand protection. Google is defending its brand as open (uncensored) and China is defending its national identity (China is autonomous and it does not dance to another country’s business interests).

However, to save my soul and to prevent this blog from being labeled un-American, I think Google has more at stake in this than China, and Google is for now, the underdog. And perhaps because Google is such a globally minded business, it has the moral authority to call out China on human rights. I do not doubt for a moment that Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, whose Jewish parents suffered great hardship in leaving communist Russia so Sergey might be raised free from oppression, was the voice that prevailed in the what to do about China question. And I still say, “Bully for Google!”