Business and Society Globalization - Google vs China - Essay Example

Introduction

The Google v. China story has many legs adequate to meet the requirements of being referred to as a centipede at this point. Notably, Google has had an unsteady liaison with the Chinese government for the past decade. Google has on numerous occasions been blocked and its operations shut down due to censorship wrangles. In 2006, Google got into an agreement with the China authorities to censor all political incitation and established the Google.cn search engine operated and run within China by the company in China. By developing and adopting the Google.cn search engine, the China authorities would take it as the official Internet Service Provider in China. China is run by a communist government that necessitates all the Internet Service Providers to self-censor by filtering content that is deemed illegal from its searches. The variety of the censored material includes political keywords such as “Tibet” and “democracy”, spiritual keywords such as “Dalai Lama” and “Falun Gong” (a religious cult proscribed by the authorities) and social content such as pornography. By opting to launch Google.cn, Google appeared to imply that its mission and values could be in alignment with the China’s self-censorship regulation.

From a financial point of view, China offered Google a rapidly growing and highly competitive market. China has more than 100 million internet users, the second largest internet market in the world. Conversely, Google.com had been operating in China since its inception in 1999. However, the service had been slow and undependable because the Chinese government had been censoring international content. Google’s primary competitors in China had been Microsoft MSN and Yahoo, who had entered the Chinese Market years before and already, adopted self-censorship.

Google’s resolution to self-censor Google.cn attracted considerable ethical criticism. The company’s mantra is “Don’t Be Evil”; however, this is totally distinct from its operations before joining China as it had positioned itself as a trustworthy company and search engine from the rest of the technology companies for storing personal information. Google also came under criticism from the United States House of Representatives for its actions in China.

Google’s mission and values

Google is the world’s largest search engine that was founded in the year 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Since its invention, Google has attracted the interests of many. The company has grown since its inception and has increased its products and services. The company’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally available and useful. The primary message on the company’s code of conduct is “being a Googler means holding oneself to the utmost standard of ethical business conduct”. The company has for a long time endeavored to make information readily available to its users without having to put them through frustrations or time wastage. The company has also for long provided fast and efficient services that have made information readily accessible. The company has on numerous occasions reiterated that it is not willing to make any ethical sacrifices to expand on its shareholders’ value.

China Censorship

The Chinese government has instituted a set of policies that restrict access to certain content on the internet. China has for a considerable period played the game of catch-up, by making efforts to modernize and become a bigger player in the market. After joining the World Trade Organization, China was forced to open up its market to international companies that gave these companies unprecedented access to the Chinese market. It is with this increased access by foreign companies that the Chinese organizations demanded developed telecommunications and infrastructure. The Chinese authorities agreed that modernization was necessary and within no time financed the modernization, making the nation one of the largest consumers of telecommunications tools. With the development of telecommunications industry in China, there was an increment in the flow of communications and trade into the country as well as outside the country. It is this flow of information into the country that concerns the ministry of public service.The department of public service is mandated with preventing, suppressing and investigating criminal deeds, maintain social security and order and fight against behaviors that may endanger social order. These obligations engross regulating the manifestation of certain ideas and acquisition of sensitive information.

In 1999, all the subscribers to Chinanet, the then primary internet service provider and operated by the government, were required to register with the Public Security Bureau, offer the authorities personal details and pledge not to “read, copy or transmit information that jeopardizes national security”. Notably, in efforts to keep up with the advanced information technology that was adopted, the Chinese government has been ardent to take new technologies that can heighten surveillance capabilities. By 2000, the Chinese government started to implement new technologies that would assist them censor activities and restrict ideas and information that is outlawed in the country.

It was in 2000 that the national assembly adopted the Golden Shield project, which purposed to use state of the art technology to police on the Chinese people. This technology aimed at controlling any form of information from video to audio. To monitor the flow of information, the national assembly put up firewalls with a content filtering system that is similar to parental control systems that can block certain material. Notably, the country has huge network of fiber cables underground that offer internet access to China and connect the state to the rest of the world. The Chinese government necessitates the internet service providers to run the fiber-optic networks and configure “router” switches that control information to and from China. After the firewall goes through the sites being accessed by the end user to confirm if they are blacklisted or not, it then employs the censorship system that utilizes a keyword blacklist and routers that go down deep into internet traffic to extract prohibited words or phrases. This, in addition to the fact that the people in China know that they are being watched, inculcates fear of imprisonment and restricts the inflow of information that the Chinese government finds abhorrent. Nonetheless, the system blocks information coming from other nations into the country. These servers have the capability to block information shared internally among the Chinese nationals within the country.

The China’s Internet market has grown over the past years from 105 million users in 2006 to 450 million in 2014. It is estimated that more than one billion people own a mobile phone in China. Google had been active in China before introducing the Google.cn in 2006. Unlike its competitors, Google was not in a hurry to set up a China based search engine and, therefore, was not well acquainted with the Chinese government censorship regulations. Yahoo entered the Chinese market by establishing a Chinese search engine, the Yahoo China while Microsoft entered the Chinese market with its MSN China search engine. However, even though Google did not have a good understanding of the Chinese market and its censorship, it managed to avoid the Chinese authorities till 2002 when its foes started. By the year 2002, Google had a user base that engrossed the pro-Western and white-color Chinese business individuals. In September 2002, the Chinese government first blocked Google.com search engine, and none of the computers within the country could use the internet on Google.com. The authorities had blocked access to the website and users would be redirected to other Chinese search engines. However, the government later lifted its ban on Google.com after one week, but the speeds were slow making Google an unreliable search engine. However, it was still again not clear on why the government had opted to unbar the search engine after stringently censoring it. It was after this that Google was unable to offer high-quality services to the Chinese populace and then launched the Google.cn to serve the Chinese people better. For the Google users in China, the searches censored included those with the subject matter as “democracy” and “Tibet” and spiritual content such as “Dalai Lama” and “Falun Gong” and any pornography related materials. If someone were to search with any of these content, the same links would appear as it would for anyone with an uncensored search engine, but trying to open the links would shut the browser or redirect the user elsewhere.

China’s great firewall censorship system is multifaceted and is dependent primarily on coercion and infliction of fear to provoke forceful self-censorship at both individual and corporate level. However, it is noteworthy to note that there is no official list of the banned texts that exist. This is because almost 98% of the content on the internet would have to be censored. Earlier studies on Chinese government censorship of content have revealed the effectiveness and extent of China’s censorship programs. One of the commonly censored topics was the “Tiananmen massacre”, with the government having managed to censor almost 90% of all related content. Additionally, the government has also managed to censor almost 88% of all webpages with the phrase “Jiang Zemin”, China’s former president, and 35% of content that is linked to the independence movements in Tibet.

The Chinese government censorship initiative took to the news across the world with reports on the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times on the list of words that had been restricted by the Chinese authorities. Additionally, to refrain from being on the wrong side with the Chinese authorities, Google opted to limit its products such as Gmail, Google Translate, and Google play store. Notably, one of the recent instances where the Chinese Government blocked access to Google was in 2014 during the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Even though the government has had a sweet n sour relationship with Google, this was the biggest attack from the Chinese authorities. Year in year out, the Chinese authorities have been vigil to stop the spread and use of the internet to search for the Tiananmen massacre and the year 2014 not only involved censoring the content but also blocking the search engine itself.

On the other hand, numerous studies have also attempted to show how the Chinese government monitors and controls the internet. These studies have shown that the Chinese government keeps an active interest in prohibiting users from accessing particular web content and that the government has configured coinciding countrywide systems that effectively block such content.

In reference to the New York Times, the Chinese authorities made Google and its services inaccessible just to stop the discussions on the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre that involved a prodemocracy demonstrator that were massacred by the Chinese military in 1989. The New York Times notes that this was not the first time the company had been shut down by the Chinese authorities. Google had been blocked in 2012 by the Chinese authorities for a few days following issues with the censorship program. The Chinese government not only blocked all the censored sites but the search engine itself. Even the other Google services that do not have a direct search function such as Google maps, calendar and Picasa photo application were unreachable. To make matters worse, the Chinese authorities censored the services of Google in such a way that it allowed limited access to at least one out of ten users, making it seem as though it was Google’s error and fault. This prompted Google to release an official statement that assured the users that it was not a technical problem from their end. Therefore, this meant that it was the Chinese government that had blocked its services in the country. This resulted in a tremendous decline in the search engine users by 50% over a period of two days.

Notably, the Chinese internet users can confirm that Google’s services have been exposed to differing levels of interference by the government since 2010 when the company was first censored by the government on allegations access and interruption by government-supported hackers. The dispute surfaced when Google accused the Chinese authorities of supporting cyber-attacks that aimed at getting access to emails of Chinese Human Rights advocates. After this move, Google was unwilling to conform to the Chinese requirements of censorship. Additionally, this move gave rise to angry condemnations by the authorities but garnered the company support from the youth who reacted by placing bereavement laurels at Google’s headquarters in Beijing. This showed the company’s support and popularity among the youth in China. Since this day, Google redirects users to an uncensored search engine in Hong Kong. Surprisingly, according to The New York Times, the government has denied ever interfering with the operations of Google in China amidst claims by users that they can hardly access Gmail. Furthermore, for the internet users who took it to social media websites to complain of inaccessibility to Google and its products such as Gmail and Picasa, their posts were immediately deleted and could not be seen. Additionally, all posts that were put up by users on blogs were also immediately put down. The Chinese government has been keen to stop any discussions on the Tiananmen massacre, to the point of detaining scholars, bloggers, and legal defenders. All those detained face criminal charges. In order to block any online conversation on the matter, the government has been keen on censoring keywords such as “May 35” and “6-4-89”.

Google’s move to un-censor its content

The move to launch the Google.cn was prompted by the slow speeds of google.com that made it an ineffective and inefficient browser. This signified that even though the country had censored content, the sluggish google.com would get through the sifting system and access the barred content. This necessitated the company to filter its content in order to make it effective. However, the company acknowledged that filtering the search results would be against its mission.

The system hack that was supported by the Chinese authorities was the game changer. Google detected the highly complicated attack on their servers that came from China. A report from Google indicated that the hack was intended to access the Gmail accounts of the Chinese human rights activists. It was because of this move that Google noted that it would not censor its content anymore and would redirect users to its Google.cn servers at Hong Kong, which is not censored. Hong Kong is considered to be outside the Chinese government “Great Firewall”. Additionally, Google started encrypting content in China. This system allow users to access uncensored sites that the government can block through blocking Google itself. Unfortunately, this did not last for long and as the Chinese government required Google to comply with the censorship requirements.

Conclusion

Google has had a rocky relationship with China for the past decade. The search engine has faced numerous instances of being blocked by the Chinese authorities. Google first joined the China internet market in China since 1999, but its services were extremely slow making the search engine unreliable among the Chinese Users. It was because of the censorship initiatives by the Chines authorities that had made Google slow. To make Google more effective, the company launched the Google.cn search engine that complied with China’s censorship policies. This meant that certain content would be blocked. Such content included numerous religious phrases, pornographic content, democracy phrases and the Tiananmen massacre phrases. The whole idea of censoring information was passed by the Chinese National Assembly that agreed to putting up firewalls that would filter the information that the country was getting and sending to other countries through the internet. The great firewall that China adopted censored all the content that the government deemed inappropriate and unlawful. Google’s first encounter with the Chinese authorities was in 2010 when the government supported a system hack on Google’s servers and 2014 when it blocked all Google services and products just a few days before the 25th anniversary to the Tiananmen Massacre.