Standing Outside the Great Firewall of China

Google stands today outside the wall, the Great Firewall of China. It is no longer a privileged citizen of the Empire, but now just another barbarian at the gates. Its business relationships are altered, its search results are blocked and its reputation has irrevocably changed. Whether that reputation has changed for the better or worse is the question now. But Google didn’t really have a choice to make. When your entire business model is based on the free exchange of information, there are some inevitabilities to deal with. With a careful analysis, one could say its hand was forced. But before we get into that, what has Google been up to since I first covered their decision in January?

Just the Facts

Its been three and a half months since Google posted an entry on its official blog criticizing the Chinese government for civil rights abuses, and detailing a largescale hacking attempt originating in China, which targeted Google’s corporate infrastructure. Google is now no longer operating a public presence in mainland China, having closed its www.google.cn site and redirected its traffic to www.google.com.hk, its Hong Kong site. However, the company will still maintain a sales office and a research and development department in mainland China. This is a result of Google’s decision to no longer censor its search results in accordance with the Chinese government’s wishes. The Hong Kong site offers uncensored search results in the Chinese language.

However, the Chinese government is happy with the change, and some rumors suggest that the government suggested the move. Mainland Chinese can still access the Hong Kong site, which allays the fears of some who thought the Chinese government would completely ban access to Google’s search page, as it has with Google’s Blogger and YouTube services. Users of the Hong Kong site have reported that they are not able to follow links to some websites listed in search results for sensitive topics. Also, access to google.com.hk was blocked entirely for some users after repeated searches for sensitive information, but restarting a computer seemed to restore access. This is the same way that China deals with Google’s original site now, google.com. It seems that Google is now officially back on the outside of the Great Chinese Firewall.

This has impacted other companies in China who were working closely with Google, such as Sina.com.cn and Ganji.com. The two companies are web portals that use Google search bars on their websites. The Chinese government issued a statement in March saying that companies like those who work with Google would have to prepare for the day when Google would no longer be available. Sina.com.cn has since switched its bar to work with Google’s Hong Kong site. While Ganji.com still says below its logo that it is a Google strategic partner, there currently is no apparent sign of a Google search bar on their site. Besides that, 27 companies signed a letter that was sent to Google China and posted on Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, asking what Google was going to do about the companies’ risk of failure when Google pulled out of China. However, one company, TOM Online, has cut ties with Google, citing an agreement expiration for the move.

Google has been working closely with companies who use their services to provide solutions. It has created a status page detailing which of its services are currently being blocked from mainland China. Google offers three services which have been blocked in China for a long time – YouTube, Sites and Blogger. YouTube allows people to upload videos, Sites allows people to make web sites quickly, and Blogger allows people to create blogs. Google Picasa, which allows people to upload photos to the Internet easily, was partially blocked for some time, but then became fully blocked on April 6. Google also tracks the partial blocking of some services, which include Google Docs, Google Groups, and Google Mobile. The services that are still accessible without problems are the search engine, image search, news, ads and Gmail.

Google’s move also made a big splash in the Chinese media. In March, an apparently coordinated effort by the Chinese state media published extreme amounts of criticism about Google. The English-language newspaper China Daily ran an editorial that said Google was running into a political minefield. “... the vested interests have described the legitimate right of the Chinese government to regulate companies and control pornographic and related content as ‘spying’ on its own people. The magnitude of this absurdity is beyond comprehension and the motivated attacks, intolerable.”

China Radio International also published a strong editorial accusing Google of being a tool of the U.S. government. “Google’s relations with the U.S. government cannot be deeper. U.S. media has said Google was the fourth-largest supporter of Barack Obama in his election campaign. Four of the company’s former executives including Sumit Agarwal, who was the product manager for the Google Mobile team and is currently deputy assistant secretary of defense, are now serving the U.S. government,” it read. It also said that Google was acting as a tool to “penetrate” the Chinese culture and Chinese people’s values.

China’s official Xinhua News Agency also followed the similar theme of accusing Google of politicizing itself. It said, “Regrettably, Google’s recent behaviors show that the company not just aims at expanding business in China, but is playing an active role in exporting culture, values, and ideas. It is unfair for Google to impose its own value and yardsticks on Internet regulation in China, which has its own time-honored tradition, culture, and value.” It ended up by saying, “... Google should not continue to politicize itself, as linking its withdrawal to political issues will lose Google’s credibility among Chinese netizens. That will make Google end up to be the biggest loser.”

What Does It All Mean?

So, Google search has been banished to Hong Kong for crimes against the Chinese government, and its presence now lies outside of the Great Firewall of China. Its official crimes were politicizing itself, and allowing itself to be used as a tool of foreign powers to influence the Chinese zeitgeist. Its a pretty hard rap sheet to beat, because it looks like Google did exactly that. By putting together business issues, ethical issues, and political issues as reason to retreat from China, Google has flexed quite a lot of muscle that many did not realize the search giant had. Google has changed the game with China, perhaps fundamentally.

The Chinese official media accused Google very strongly of politicizing itself, and it’s really hard to deny that kind of allegation when the U.S. Secretary of State backs your company’s decision up in a speech the very next day. Secretary Clinton equated Internet freedom of information with U.S. interests, and said that the U.S. would defend their interests. That is unequivocally politicizing the issue of the freedom of information. So yes, Google must stand guilty as charged – in the political arena, it stands with the United States, and the U.S.’s claim to being ‘interested’ in the unfettered exchange of information. But, really, that is the only stance that Google could take. Its entire business model is built on profiting from the free exchange of information, and in fact it makes the exchange of information more free at every opportunity. It has no choice but to ally itself with whichever political interest most supports its business model.

Google wasn’t exactly doing so well in the Chinese market, a point that many critics used to say that the company’s decision was merely mercenary. However, the link between the free exchange of information and Google’s profit margins is undeniable. So, while China blocks the free exchange of information, Google simply cannot make a profit. It’s like a company whose profits come from the free exchange of pollen between plants, which then grow and bear fruit, which the company harvests and sells. A company like that could not operate efficiently in a country that highly regulated the exchange of pollen in its airspace. (I leave the exact method for pollen exchange regulation in this theoretical country as an exercise for the reader.) Like that fruit company, Google has no choice but to encourage the free exchange of information, as that company would have to encourage the free exchange of pollen to be profitable.

Now, looking at the accusations of the Chinese media in that light, you can begin to think of things differently. Because the fact remains that Google has been outside of politics for a long time. The company has never confronted a government before. It has never been an activist in other causes. It has quietly offered a framework for the average user to access the gigantic information blob that is the Internet, and inserted unobtrusive ads next to its work. It charges as little as 5 cents for each ad, and can said to have literally become a billion-dollar company one nickel at a time. After Google reached critical mass, achieving 51 percent of the search market online, it quickly shot up to the 90 percent range, and has been consolidating its base of wealth by offering unmatched services for free, in order to make sure people keep offering their eyes forever. Your momentary attention is all Google wants, ladies and gentlemen, so please step up and see its wonders and splendors tonight. And people do step up.

Google’s business model was decidedly apolitical. It doesn’t need government contracts. It doesn’t need to foment rebellion. It doesn’t even need congressional approval for anything. The company has stayed out of politics until this spat with the Chinese government. So why would a multi-billion dollar company decide to get into a disagreement with one of the most powerful governments in the world? It’s simple – China was interfering with Google’s business model. Because, you see, it wasn’t Google that first politicized the free exchange of information, it was China. The free exchange of information is very threatening to the Chinese government, which is why it has controlled the information within its country as much as possible for the past 50 years. So, basically, Google’s business model was a direct threat to the Chinese government. The two could simply not see eye to eye for any length of time.

Quotes from the Xinhua commentary on Google are quite telling. The news agency states, “In fact, no country allows unrestricted flow on the Internet of pornographic, violent, gambling or superstitious content, or content on government subversion, ethnic separatism, religious extremism, racialism, terrorism and anti-foreign feelings.” From this statement we can infer that China’s web censorship tries to restrict those topics. However, with a quick Google search, I can find web sites on every single one of those topics. Particularly, www.overthrowthegovernment.org and www.stormfront.org deal with subversion and racism, respectively. Web sites of superstition and anti-foreign feelings are freely available, in fact they are profoundly numerous. From my personal experience, it seems that the Internet runs with a constant background hum of outrage, as billions of people rediscover that they don’t all agree with each other every minute. And yet, almost all of the wired countries of the world seem to be doing fine. Only a few governments, China’s among them, have such a long laundry list of fears about the Internet.

Now, there’s not much that anyone can do about this. The only thing to take from the Google vs. China debacle is to be reminded, yet again, that China stands firmly against the free exchange of information. Also, it would be good to note again that the United States, based on Secretary Clinton’s words, views the free exchange of information as a vested national interest. These are like signposts on the global stage. From a business standpoint, businessmen should look closely at their companies, and decide how much their profits derive from the free exchange of information, and how much its restriction will impact their bottom line. Then, they can simply take a look at the signposts, and steer their companies in the right direction, in the same way that Google has.