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March 30, 2010

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Home » Opinion » Foreign Views

Google forgot that there are reasons for China's rules

By Jacob von Bisterfeld | March 30, 2010, Tuesday | Print Edition

So, Google is so powerful that it has decided to disregard the house rules of their host who were kind enough to allow it to carve out a niche market.

Brave? Maybe yes, in the eyes of some American politicians and activists. Impolite? Of course. Reckless? Yes, rather. Google, as well as umpteen foreign organizations and politicians, like to cry wolf about anything that is happening in China, and give it, whenever possible, a nasty twist. Bad news sells; good news is boring.

Any commercial entity may suffer a setback now and then, but they learn from it and try to prevent a recurrence. Not Google. Google decided to take to the moral high-ground. "Freedom of information" is the battle cry.

Of course, in an ideal world with 100 percent responsible and peace-loving inhabitants that would not be a hard-to-reach goal. Things would not be so bad if the guy on the other side of the speaking trumpet could be known.

Sadly, however, technology and the Internet enable all who wish to sow death and destruction to remain anonymous. Thus slanderous untruths are being disseminated in forever increasing volumes so that it is virtually impossible to separate truth from untruth.

Worse, the Internet has an uncanny knack of uniting deviant people with extreme views who read nothing but kindred messages, sweeping sentiments into a fury. Case in point is the recent and sad massacre of several hundred Chinese who were murdered in the most barbaric way, with thousands of casualties and property looted and burnt, in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which was, substantially, an Internet-induced massacre.

Iraqi brutality pictures and bloody war pictures from foreign countries were published on the Internet, claiming to be serial persecution of Xinjiang people. Within hours of publication on the Internet, Xinjiang had erupted into a battle zone of racial hatred.

Many foreigners proclaim to know better and impose their will on China. They somehow assume a God-given right to part manage China and to speed up things according to their own timetable. This leads us down the path to disaster as recent history has taught, but few appear to have learnt the lesson.

There was Vietnam to be taught a lesson, in the opinion of American politicians. It was an unwinnable war and not only were 58,000 United States troops killed but also 1.1 million innocent Vietnamese. Even today, many Vietnamese can be seen without legs or walking with crutches. Iraq is another example.

Freedom of speech? Yes, but it needs to be identifiable. The world needs to know who you are, so that you can atone in a court of law if you defame or place malicious information or preach racial hatred and acts of war.

One Internet or mobile phone account with one (real) name and address. And an Internet with no place to hide. Hacking and identity changes and bot-nets should be severely punishable offences in every country. So long as this cannot be assured, there shall be censorship of destabilizing messages and investigation of social unrest propagators and people with ulterior motives.

Google, as an experienced Internet operator, should understand and respect this. And they appeared to understand it so well in the past. Sadly, Google management has gone back on its entry promise: to abide by the laws of China.

Yes, China is, for many foreigners, hard to follow. The writer will be the last one to claim to be an "old China hand" but he has seen China develop from a basket-case on his first visit to China in 1982 as a member of one of the first New Zealand trade delegations, to a substantially prosperous and modern country with unprecedented freedom for all who obey the law.

In this writer's experience, time and again, what are perceived to be unpleasant and unusual or even nonsensical decisions made in China leave many foreigners baffled and flabbergasted if not angered.

In my experience, with a ton of understanding, respect and patience, eventually the most puzzling disputes come right and, not infrequently, to the benefit of the patient and respectful foreigner.

As for Google, it would do well to contemplate the lyrics the 1960s hit song by Peter, Paul & Mary: "When will they ever learn".

(The author is a freelancer based in Shanghai.)

Foreign Views


 

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