China and Censorship

News is coming out about a cyber-attack last December that focused on the Gmail accounts of a few human-rights activists in China. When Google launched their .cn site in 2006 it was quite broadly bashed for giving in to Chinese government demands to censor certain sites out of search results. Google argues that it found that giving the Chinese broader access to web content than they had ever had before still merited the censorship. Fair enough. China needs to part of any global companies strategy (did you read that China has now taken over the United States in another market? The market for cars.) You simply can't call yourself global and ignore a market of 1.1 billion.

Having said that Google seems to be rethinking their strategy towards China and I must say that I am very proud of what they are doing. Bottom line is that they want to work out a way to remove all censorship from their .cn site. If an agreement can't be worked out with Chinese authorities they are threatening to pull out of China altogether. If we had more public and private companies call a spade a spade and threaten to pull out of China then maybe (just maybe, only maybe) might the impact be felt on the government.

Large corporations have set up research and development as well as manufacturing plants in China knowing full well that there continue to be human-rights issues in that country. The self-serving interest is clearly greater profit due to lower costs as well as, from a consumer perspective, a never-ending thirst for cheaper products without thought of the consequences.

Regardless of whether the Chinese government is found to be the source of the cyber-attack my hope would be that other companies follow Google's lead on this. Governments are unable to act due to fears of retaliation, due to trade laws, impacts on economies, on currencies and other macroeconomic and political issues. Corporations however can act as, while sometimes still complex, the direct stakeholders are fewer and the impact is, generally, not as broadly felt. So my take is that more corporations should act and think twice before investing in a country that has a shady reputation.

Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

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