There was a story in today's New York Times concerning the appearance before the House of Representatives by four executives, one each from Google, Yahoo!, Cisco, and Microsoft. The issue at hand: the companies represented at the hearing are accused of cooperating with the government of China in hamstringing the free flow of information over the Internet to desktops in China.
I don't suppose that there is much argument about the guilt of Google, et al, in this matter. The arguments made by these companies, as presented in this story and in numerous others for the past few months, are pretty weak. They sound a lot like the arguments that weapons manufacturers make -- "if we don't sell it to them, they'll just get it somewhere else."
The thing that struck me as most telling in the story, however, was a bit peripheral to the main issue. It seemed to me to be the most honest thing I've heard someone from Congress say in a long while (emph. added):
But Representative Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat, took up Mr. Lantos's question later and asked if Congress ought not be ashamed itself, for having granted China trade status as a most favored nation. Mr. Wexler said that it was "duplicitous" to blame the companies for doing what the government had legally sanctioned them to do, and that the firms were in a "no-win situation."
That suggestion drew an incredulous response from Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican. "Most favored nation status?" he said, "Who lobbied for that? Come on. The corporations did."
And there you have it: an admission, on the record, that Congress is powerless to resist the lobbying efforts of big corporations.
2 comments:
I thought this was a fascinating issue. In a lot of ways, I think the corporations are right on this one: First of all, their legal obligation is to maximize profits for their shareholders -- not to right civil liberties injustices around the world. Second of all, I think they are in fact correct that if they don't provide web surfing to China under that government?s restrictions, some corporation from Australia or Asia will do so.
I hadn't heard the remarks by Rep. Wexler, but he's of course right. How can Congress call Google to task for seizing the opportunity to do business there when they themselves have turned a blind eye to everything before and since Tiananmen Square just to ingratiate the U.S. with the country to which its has the biggest trade deficit?
It's Yahoo I think is the despicable one, however. They're the one who worked with the Chinese government to track a "dissident" who is now jailed in some Chinese gulag
Yeah, this is a hard one. This is an issue where I feel completely at a loss to comment intelligently. Never has the phrase "I only know what I read in the papers" seemed more depressingly accurate.
I'd like to believe, however, that were I a billionaire owner of a company like Google or Yahoo!, I would just say, "Fuck the Chinese government. Let them buy their software from someone else. Besides, I can pitch this to the stockholders by wrapping myself in the Bill of Rights."
This may, just may, have something to do with why I'm not a billionaire.
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