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The recent announcement of Liu Xiaobo, famed anti-Chinese Communist Party dissident, as winner of the Nobel Peace Prize elicited sharp responses from both ends of the debate. As a pro-democratic reformer, Liu is currently serving an 11-year jail sentence in Jinzhou Prison in the Liaoning Province, driving the Chinese central government to call the choice “blasphemous” and “completely contrary to the aims of the award,” according to The New York Times. The Chinese government has responded by canceling visits with Norwegian officials and, more significantly, by censoring any mention of Liu on the Internet with China or in the Chinese media.
This raises a serious question about one of the primary methods by which China censors information: does Google, one of America’s biggest companies and famously branded with the slogan “Don’t Be Evil,” have a responsibility not to aid the Chinese government in its clear violation of human rights in this censorship of Xiaobo’s honor?
The short answer is yes, and Google understands that. In January of this year, upon learning of attempted hacking into google.cn and many other technology companies coming from within China, Google announced that it would no longer censor search results as per its agreement with the Chinese government. Google.com users were redirected to google.com/hk, the Hong Kong portal, which benefited from the city’s unique international status to not uphold the central government’s so-called “Golden Shield” censorship project. Google took these drastic measures because, according to their blog, “of the security and human rights implications” of the crackdowns that targetted Chinese human rights activists.
The battle concluded when Google reapplied for a Chinese Internet content provider license in July. Now when one clicks in the search bar on google.cn, the site redirects to the Hong Kong portal. The Chinese government is apparently content with this very slight increase in distance between the user and google.com/hk, satisfied that while users can see the search results that anyone else can, the government can still stop specific websites from being accessed.
Google’s stance against the Chinese government, therefore, has not met its potential, and has been necessarily limited. Ingrained ideas prevail. For instance, the Chinese name for Google, Guge (goo-guh), sounds suspiciously like gege (guh-guh), Big Brother. Google added to the government’s “transparency” by informing users when their results were censored, unlike competitor and majority market shareholder Baidu.
This is not to say that Google is not resisting the government at all, but rather that it is not doing enough in a fight it said it would fight. As a company, there is no inherent expectation of grand humanitarian gestures or the beginnings of social revolution. But Google, to most of its users, is far more than a company. Its services encompass YouTube, Maps, e-mail and blogs, which is to speak nothing of its work in making digital copies of every piece of literature ever produced and in designing self-driving cars. Google regularly changes the very way we interact with information, and as such has a responsibility to not limit its positive externalities W/C to friendly, democratic countries.
Google.com now produces search results for “Liu Xiaobo,” “Tiananmen Square” and other “anti-Chinese” searches, thanks to its google.com/hk redirect. But all that this offers users is the knowledge that those search results exist; they still can’t access the content. Google has revolutionized the way we share information. Don’t Chinese citizens deserve the same insight that users around the world have? Google’s social responsibility is not just to the American user, or to people using Android phones, or to Gmail account holders. The company needs to do its part to communicate to Chinese citizens the significance of Mr. Liu’s achievements and the dark side of their own government.
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