A Furor in Congress Over Chinese Censorship

Last week, the Big Four of Internet technology were called on the Congressional carpet over their participation in helping the Chinese government censor the Web. Politicians lashed out at Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Cisco, accusing them of collaborating with China's "regime of repression" and pledging to enact a law soon to make such cooperation illegal.

"What Congress is looking for is real spine and willingness to stand up to the outrageous demands of a totalitarian regime," said Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and the co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. Chinese dissidents are "in the Chinese gulag because Yahoo chose to reveal their identities to the Chinese government."

Lantos' comments relate to several developments over the past few months, such as Microsoft's deletion of a journalist's blog, Yahoo's cooperation in turning over information about a Chinese journalist and Google's censored search service in China.

Republican Rep. Chris Smith, chairman of the House subcommittee on global human rights, produced a quote that should be engraved on the entrance of every stock exchange: "Cooperation with tyranny should not be embraced for the sake of profits."

Smith also likened cooperating with China's ruling Communist Party to aiding Adolf Hitler and Germany's Nazi party during the Second World War. During the Holocaust, Smith said, Jews were "marched off to incredible precision and the trains did run on time to the gas chambers," thanks to punched-card technology originating in the United States.

Google also drew the ire of Rep. Jim Leach, an Iowa Republican who called the search giant a "functionary of the Chinese government" after a long line of questioning about the company's tactics in restricting search results returned by its google.cn site.

In response, the technology companies said the decision to comply with censorship had been a difficult one that ultimately was justified by the notion that providing limited service to Chinese users was better than providing no service at all.

My personal response to that is that their decision to help the Chinese government was ultimately justified by making a profit. When it comes to human rights vs the almighty dollar, the buck wins every time. Humanity is not even a close second to the value of the "bottom line." Please don't feed me some hypocritical tripe about how you are trying to help the Chinese people.

Of course, Congress is far from flawless here also. U.S. leaders have been coddling China for years, and now they lead the way in attacking US companies for doing exactly the same thing. Nothing much is going to happen on this issue until someone stands up for the value of the human being over the dollar. Dream on, Jim.