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.

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.