Interesting that after reading the article I returned to the Salon.com home page to find "Yahoo Search." It would seem that Salon is also 'in bed' with Yahoo. Can you say "Practice what you preach?"

regarding M. Dupre's letter-- unfortunately I've always found it easier to search Salon using an external search engine. Try "term(s) searched for" a space, then "site:salon.com" make sure you don't leave a space after the colon.

I found this article very interesting since I lived in China for over a year, and travelled all over the country. I think companies like Google and Yahoo are in a very difficult position. I do agree that assisting the government track down dissidents is totally inappropriate. However, I think I lean toward the side that it is better that the Chinese have some access to these powerful search engines than none at all. China is opening up so quickly, and I feel that overall Internet access is creating more freedom for the Chinese rather than less. Also, Chinese people are very cynical about their government. They all know that the government censors news, so they are prepared to take news with a grain of salt. I read Yahoo news while I was over there plenty of times, and overall, it was very similar to what you see in Yahoo news here.

I also wanted to point out that the Interent censorship there is not as total as one may think. It is very difficult to censor every single thing you may not like on the Internet. I actually read the New York Times online every day from public Internet bars in China because you have to login using a password. You can create a New York Times login as long as you have a U.S. zipcode, which some Chinese people used. Also, it was while living in China that I was first introducted to Salon.com. I read Salon nearly every day in public Internet bars there.

In addition, the rampant piracy of CDs and DVDs in China actually allows in a great deal of information the Chinese wouldn't have otherwise. Piracy actually assists the country in bringing in new ideas since the pirated CDs and DVDs are sold outside the law.

Interestingly enough, I bought a book about how the Communists oppressed the Tibetans in a state-owned bookstore while living there. I was shocked that they had allowed it. Frankly, what they decided to censor and what they didn't often made no sense. I never could access the Washington Post online, but the Washington Times was always availabe.

So, I guess what I'm saying is I wouldn't condemn these companies right away. I think they are in a difficult situation, and having a presence in China does assist the country in opening up. I hope that while walking the fine line between providing a service and assisting the government in censorship, they act with a conscience.

None of these companies are in a tough situation. What is tough about making money? I am sure they are crying all the way to the bank.

What I garned from this article is that these companies are actively contributing to the repression of a group of people. I know that's not what I want to do when I grow up.

Felicity, I think it's really important that we foreigners don't describe the state of censorship in China based on our own experiences because our experience is in accessing English-language websites, which China's censors don't really care about. I never had a problem accessing New York Times, even when they had a story about a villagers' riot a few hours south from my location in Hangzhou, against the factory that was polluting their town and the corrupt authorities. But this story (and others like it) was not covered in Chinese-language media. The ordinary Chinese is not a savvy enough media consumer to employ the ever-changing proxy services that a foreigner in China usually knows about. China doesn't care about what's on the New York Times or danwei. They care about what's on baidu and Google News Chinese. They're actually very effective where they want to be.

I think it's such bad faith for these businesses to throw up their hands as if they are powerless and the relationship is one-sided. The foreign companies have some power and influence here. Certainly, I recognize that they cannot dictate their terms but they should remember that China wants their business as much as they want China's market. They can force some concessions if they realize that profits and ethics are not mutually exclusive.

Hi Lynn,

That's a good point about language.

But as increasing numbers of Chinese are in fact fluent enough in English to read English-language news, this kind of news will spread. Despite the fact that the vast majority of people are unable to speak or read English, there are still millions of urban dwellers who can read English well enough to understand English language news sites, and they then share this information with their friends and family. This will increase since China is pushing its citizens to learn English. There are urban Chinese swapping U.S. zipcodes to access American news sites.

I suppose that Yahoo and Google could refuse to operate there, but does that really help anyone?

One disturbing aspect of US corporations cooperating in this censorship is that should the hard right in the US succeed in implementing censorship here (you know, to keep us "safe" from terrorists, child molesters and such), they will have willing and able cooperation from companies that have already perfected the technology in China.

somebody better tell that guy who switched from yahoo to gmail that gmail doesn't erase his emails, ever. If he's worried about Yahoo turning him in, i don't know why he'd feel any safer with google.

I find it grimly humorous that an article describing the complicity of Yahoo! and other internet portals in China's repression of freedom is on my monitor directly below a "Powered by Yahoo!" search engine box. I wonder if Salon is on the "filter list" that would get a searcher in China disconnected from his ISP.