The Financial Times reports on a letter sent by Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo to Yahoo founder Jerry Yang criticizing Yahoo's collaboration with the Chinese government. According to the report:
International companies are ignoring basic human rights in return for business opportunity, while the Communist party is offering profits in return for continued control of the internet and the ability to intimidate dissidents, Mr Liu writes.
“The collusion of these two kinds of ugliness means that there is no way for western investment to promote freedom of speech in China, and that in fact it greatly increases the ability of the Communist party to blockade and control the internet.”
“You are helping the Communist party maintain an evil system of control over freedom of information and speech,” he writes.
(Thanks David Kopel!)
Isn't it embarrassing, even mortifying for these companies to be criticized from inside China. The last sentence really hits the mark. Yahoo does not sell TVs or grain. It sells a tool that can facilitate democracy or stifle it. Even if you accept the claim that engagement in China fosters human rights, selling the government a service that allows them to track people's communications is different from selling them leather handbags. I believe Yahoo does take this view when it comes to protecting the interests of their US users. I've worked with wonderful people at Yahoo to help protect anonymous posters on Yahoo message boards against frivolous suits meant to unmask their identity. How can it turn its head in the name of "compliance with legal processes" when it comes to their Chinese users?
Xiaobo wrote that Yahoo has enough market clout not to need to toady to authorities. Even if Yahoo chooses to dispute this (despite the billion dollar deal it just did with Chinese commerce website Alibaba), together, Yahoo and Cisco and Google and Microsoft certainly have enough market clout. Why can't these companies get together and figure out how to use their combined power to assure that their technologies are not being used to deny their Chinese customers basic human rights?
We're trying to put together a forum at Stanford Law School to discuss this. Maybe get some feedback from the companies themselves.