After Google: “Dance with Shackles On”

If you cut through much of the official Chinese reaction surrounding Google’s possible departure from China, the central point is this: “Whatever the real cause for Google’s possible move, this case is purely business in nature and it should have nothing to do with political ideology. If this Internet giant has political values, it should never have been involved in such a business.” That sentiment—which appeared in this case in a China Daily editorial but has been expressed widely—gets to a fundamental question that much of China’s business and political class has yet to reconcile: Can, or should, a company have a political ideology?

The reaction in China to Google’s actions have ranged from resentment to admiration, but perhaps the most frequent theme is downright bafflement that an American company would abandon the prospect of future business in China over high-minded notions of how a company should act. After Google, the responsibility for setting the boundary of government interference will fall to firms like Baidu. The caricature of Baidu is that it is blithely content to do whatever authorities demand. Perhaps, but I suspect the reality is more complicated—and we will discover if that’s the case in the months to come—but, for the moment, I was struck by a recent posting on the blog of Baidu’s chief product designer, Sun Yunfeng. His posting was promptly censored, but it is circulating on the Chinese Web and stirring discussion. I’ve chosen and translated some excerpts:

Google claims it is withdrawing from China, which proves that it is exactly not what all the so-called “g-fans” claimed: a human-rights warrior. It is, in fact, the opposite: nothing but a crafty businessman.

The tone of Google’s chief legal consultant disgusts me. If you withdraw for economic reasons, say it outright. Putting on make-up and saying that Google was attacked by the Chinese and that the Gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents were attacked, in order to pave the way for its withdrawal from China, is a humiliation to Chinese people’s intelligence. It might just suit Westerners’ fantasies—those who are arrogant, have never been to China, don’t know China but love talk about China.

If Google had achieved eighty per cent of China’s search engine market, would the senior management of Google still proclaim, “Do no evil” [sic], and would they still withdraw from China?

The whole thing makes me feel one thing: nauseated.

Common sense: Unequal access to information is one of the major causes of social inequality. The most important information to people is not secrets from inside Zhongnanhai [the Chinese leadership compound] but common information about economics, culture, and technology. Providing convenient access to that information, to make up for the inequity in information, is one of the ways that a search engine can be of social and political significance.

From this perspective, trying to provide convenient access to information for people and give them real value is a responsible approach. It’s not about making a great spectacle of claiming to “do no evil” and then dying a heroic glorious death by turning against the government. It is fine to find a way to exit, but not by playing on the emotions of a population that is under such tight control. That is immoral.

The political system cannot be changed in the short run. In China, every enterprise and individual has to dance with shackles on. It is the same in other countries, to varying degrees. But that is the reality. Trying your best to do your part, within a limited environment, is a sincere way to conduct yourself as a company and a person.