20100416 Praise for Google’s withdrawal from China

Praise for Google’s withdrawal from China

By Michael Chen 陳博修
Friday, Apr 16, 2010, Page 8

The world’s largest Internet search engine, Google, recently decided to close its operations in China because it was opposed to China’s demands that it filter searches containing key search words such as “Tiananmen Square massacre,” “Falun Gong” and “Dalai Lama.”

Google’s decision shocked the world, but even more interesting is the fact that we have yet to see pro-unification media outlets within Taiwan take the stance of promoting freedom and criticizing China for harming human rights and freedom of the press.

All we have seen these media outlets do is applaud the Chinese authorities and say Google chose to give up substantial business opportunities for “political purposes,” and that it was not wise for Google to remove itself from the world’s largest market.

These media outlets have also taken pleasure in ridiculing Google’s falling stock prices and talking about how great China’s Baidu search engine is and how much its stocks have overtaken Google’s in value.

On the day Google chose to withdraw from the Chinese market, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen not only praised Google for making the right decision, he also encouraged Microsoft’s Bing and other companies like Yahoo to withdraw from China. Sarcastic comments even appeared in China’s Chongqing Evening News about how it was not right for China to give Google no choice but to leave China. It is very regrettable that Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) last instructions to uphold democracy seem to have been totally erased from the minds of pro-unification media outlets by the Chinese Communist Party.

Does Google really not care about commercial interests? As one of the world’s largest companies, Google definitely knows what it is doing. The childhood experiences of Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, in the oppressive totalitarian USSR and the constant spying that underlay its rule are probably some of the main reasons for Google’s withdrawal from China.

The corporate image Google has managed to uphold and the trust it has gained from its users as a result of the decision to leave China are much bigger gains. Two weeks after the company’s withdrawal from China, its stock prices in the US were higher than they were before they left China, while Baidu’s stock price remained flat. It is also worth remembering that it is meaningless to compare Google and Baidu’s stock prices because Baidu’s capital stock is much lower than that of Google’s.

However, Google did not really leave the Chinese market. The company’s other business operations are still running as normal there, and Chinese Internet users can still use the simplified Chinese character version of the Google search engine, although its Web address has been changed to Google’s Hong Kong site.

Unfortunately, Chinese Internet users are still unable to get results for searches that use words like “Tiananmen Square” and “Dalai Lama.” The biggest thing to come out of Google withdrawing its search engine services from China is the way in which the international media has mocked China for its “Great Firewall” while applauding Google for not giving in to China by agreeing to filter search results. Pro-­unification media outlets in Taiwan should remember this and strive to uphold democracy.

I applaud Google and would like to urge Internet users to stand up and show their distaste for the way China blocks information and hampers the basic human right of free access to knowledge. I would also like to urge the international media to refuse unreasonable requests from China.

Michael Chen is president of ZiPCOM Corp.