Are you kidding? Have you ever even been to China or done business there??
response to Rebecca MacKinnon and Josh Cochran's post Internet Intervention
Are you serious?? This is one of the most juvenile and ill-informed articles I think I've ever read. I can appreciate the sentiment to be sure. But, the US doesn't dictate policy to other countries. Nor can US companies dictate policy to foreign governments (imagine if it were the reverse: a Chinese Search engine dictating how we receive information according to their government beliefs). US companies can't tell the Chinese government what to do, anymore than China can control how the US government manages our country.
We, as Americans, can tell them all we want about how to improve their lifestyle, and certainly freedom of speech is at the core of our belief system (and that's why we choose to live here...and not China!).
Do you think the Chinese government is swayed one bit by what American companies/citizens think they should do? Have you ever been to China? Do you know anything about the culture or government? Do you study their economy or their political landscape? Your article reads from someone naiively-American (the kind the rest of the world continually ridicules for ignorance). Before suggesting that the US, or a US company, should tell another country what they should do ("..unless we tell companies what we want them to do" -- in China??) -- you should probably educate yourself...alot.
Do you think if you organized a boycott of Google, then Google would be forced, and therefore able to convince China to change their political policy? And the entire country would change their censorship/communication laws because your organized a boycott of Google?
Seriously...if you're going to write articles, try to have an ounce of knowledge about what you're writing. I can't believe I wasted my time writing this, but I was so aghast to see something so ridiculous "published"
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Ouch, but also...
A mean post. But also a lazy one.
Google the author's name and many of the questions you raise in the third paragraph ("Have you ever been to China? Do you know anything about the culture or government? Do you study their economy or their political landscape?") will be answered (yes, yes and yes).
Google doesn't have any obligation to serve China and MacKinnon's point is simply that these internet companies are at a crossroads and shouldn't trade integrity for customers.
What she is suggesting isn't that the US Government "dictate policy" but rather that those US citizens who think rights abuses are BAD (count me in) hold US companies to high standards when it comes to privacy and freedom of speech.
If "customers" and shareholders and investment operations put pressure on Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to avoid complicity in human rights infringements and Google turns its back on China, then China looks worse in the world's eye and falls behind. MacKinnon's very article is pressure in the form of bad PR.
And I don't know why you're so hung up on education (I think credentials are often overvalued) but as long you are, my dad has a PhD in Chinese history from Harvard and won't use Google for this very reason. Does Google notice? Probably not. But he tells his students his rationale and he still thinks its the right thing to do, which matters.
Be well.
Posted on June 16, 2007 — by andrewprice
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McKinnon did well...
Eastandwest's criticism of Ms McKinnon's article was ill-founded.
Nowhere does McKinnon presume to lecture the Chinese government on their abuse of their citizens' human rights, except by her well-taken criticism of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo for taking part in these human rights abuses.
It's appalling that censorship and imprisonment of people for their political speech has found such rabid and thoughtless defense. By eastandwest's logic, we were right to blind ourselves to the murders committed by Hitler and Stalin during their heyday, to say nothing of the mountain of corpses piled up by Mao. After all, none of those dictators were "swayed one bit by what American companies/citizens" thought they should do (i.e., stop persecuting and murdering their own people for political dissent).
And anticipating the inevitable retort, one doesn't have to defend the stupidities and outright tortures committed by a handful of poorly-supervised troops in Iraq to recognize and detest even worse and much more systematic human rights abuses which are being abetted by American firms. Abu Ghraib was an aberration; the suppression of domestic dissent and jailing of dissidents is characteristic of Beijing.
Posted on July 22, 2007 — by vfrickey
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