Google: Changing the Dynamic Between State and Private Enterprise

While the Los Angeles Times seems to be criticizing Google for their decision to stop censoring their websites in China, I, for one, am Google’s biggest cheerleader. The company has risked virtually all of its business in China in order to take a stand against censorship, redirecting people from Google.cn to the uncensored website in Hong Kong. It also has decided to open a Twitter account in China against Chinese laws, emphasizing their willingness to fight against the unfair laws of the government preventing the Chinese people from accessing useful information.

The risks that Google faces go far beyond simply being banned from China as a search engine and an email server. Google’s ventures in the country are numerous, following Google’s mission statement to “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” With these ambitions, Google had brought to China many of the same information-sorting technologies that we enjoy here in the United States, including the incredibly popular Gmail with Googledocs. The company also had high hopes to introduce a line of smart phones that many Chinese are increasingly relying on for surfing and searching the Web. Google has even been giving away its Android technology to cell phone makers in order to establish their presence in this market and to pass the savings onto producers. However, many of Google’s Chinese partners have been put under pressure to pull out of deals with the search engine company since its refusal to abide by Chinese laws of censorship. Some have described this as a “tightrope act” with Google balancing laws with business ventures, working around Chinese regulations but still trying to maintain a hold on the smartphone market in the country.

Google’s tactics have drawn the attention of business people and political minds alike. It has been studied by Douglas Paal, vice president of the Varnegie Endowment for International Peace and a senior advisor on Asian affairs in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. It is also a topic of debate in the White House circles. According to National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer, Google had informed the White House of its decision to end its own censorship in China. While many hoped that Google would simply pull out of China in order to maintain a more positive relationship, the fact that Google has decided to play hardball and fight against Beijing should send a much-needed message to the Chinese government that it is simply “too difficult to do business in China.”

But this is not simply a fight over business practices. This is a battle that has been fought between nations in the past, between the people and their governments for decades. This is the fight to free speech and freedom to information. Classic novels such as Animal Farm and 1984 have demonstrated to the Western world the importance of information and its power over a people. Whoever holds knowledge, holds dominion. In mainland China today, the government controls what information its people have access to by controlling the channels of information. With restricted access to search engines and news sources, as well as to social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter, mainland Chinese are unable to learn credible information about current events – especially those involving the government. In a recent move, Google has opened up a Twitter feed on their webpage that lifted the 9-month hiatus of accessibility to the micro-blogging website. According to the LA Times, “The tweets do not show up for all searches, but only for terms that appear to be popular on Twitter. On Thursday morning, that included discussions on such taboo subjects as how to circumvent China's Internet firewall, why Google decided to exit China and a vaccine scandal unfolding in central China.”

Thanks to Google’s information organizing, citizens of mainland China are getting a taste of what sorts of information are out in the world that they have been kept from them by their government. This is a tremendous moment in history. A business corporation has decided to take on one of the most powerful nations in the world at the core of their domestic policy. Google’s attack on China, while it may prove to be detrimental to their business ventures in the country, challenges two important aspects that make China so successful on the international stage. First, it attacks Beijing’s ability to manage the lives of each of its citizens in a way that is both efficient and beneficial to the country as a whole. As a communist government, Beijing has the ability to organize Chinese citizens and to keep them from revolt and revolution by controlling the information they receive, as well as controlling their access to income and social change. This seems like the sort of thing we find in fiction, but the Google vs. China battle has brought to light what has been overlooked for centuries. China’s ability to maintain its Great Firewall and other harsh restrictions on businesses is possible because of its attractiveness as a market. With such a large population, the opportunity to operate in China is a tremendous benefit for any multinational corporation. Many would sacrifice, as Google had, on their normal business operations just to get a share of the Chinese market. However, what Google has done by fighting back is it has shown the world the difficulties of doing business in China. Perhaps now, others will not be so willing to make the necessary sacrifices to cooperate with Beijing.

The wake of Google’s stance has already begun spreading to other companies. GoDaddy.com, one of the largest internet webpage servers in the world, has decided to stop offering new China domain names. Will other companies follow their lead soon? Who will be daring enough to take the stand that Google has against one of the more powerful governments in the world? The steps already taken have begun to pave a new path at the intersection between international relations and global marketing.