The sleeping dragon has opened a single eye and lazily turned its gaze to Google.
According to The New York Times, Chinese computer crackers broke into Gmail accounts and the e-mails of human rights activists. As a result, Google is threatening to leave China.
Yahoo! is aligning itself with Google, according to Yahoo! news. Oh, and our president is publicly on their side, too, according to telegrah.co.uk. One way or another, this year will be a hallmark year for policy makers on both sides of the pond in terms of how foreign Internet technology companies operate within the borders of China.
Earlier this year, Google bowed to the Chinese government’s demands to release the names of human rights activists, who were then arrested. Google censored its search results in China, according to ZDNet. Google has kowtowed to the extreme in terms of ensuring that it remains in the Chinese market. Yet here they are, standing on the ledge, threatening to jump, not so much down, mind you, but away.
Google, however, is not the first to be ostracized. Yahoo!, eBay and Cisco Networking have all had to contend with the unfriendly gaze of the leviathan. India now suspects China of hacking.
Where’s all this fancy hacking/cracking/general Internet hooliganism stemming from, anyway? China’s policy is that hacking is a crime. End of story. So are these attacks unsanctioned, but appreciated? Are they rogue interest groups who just happen to be operating from within China’s borders? Would China even allow that with its track record of stamping out opposition? What everyone’s still trying to figure out is whether or not there is a distinct link to the Chinese Government and intelligence services.
It reminds me of the distributed denial of service attacks originating from within China against major U.S. I.T. firms with a large presence on the web from 1999-01. Chinese crackers attacked Yahoo!, Google, eBay, AOL (which used to be a major Web portal), MSN and a slew of other sites. What is it with China and hatin’ on our Internets? These are good Internets!
So Google is willing to pull the plug on its operations in China. Isn’t this exactly what they want? Google’s market share in China is around 36 percent, according to the Wallstreet Journal. Baidu, a Chinese search engine, would have a complete monopoly over searches within the world’s most populous country, and perhaps that would be much easier to censor and control. There’s already a “Great Firewall” around China. The only Internet threats now lie from within.
Ultimately, I don’t think China should do that. Google is the juggernaut of this day and age. They are a force to be reckoned with the world over. Of course, China is the lumbering dragon. This is a clash of the titans: the emerging superpower vs. the supreme overlord of the Internet. I think China needs Google, however. If Google completely pulls out of China, it may change those warm, gooey feelings of investment security. Who wants to pour money into a country unfriendly to investments in foreign firms?
In China’s formative stages on the road to superpower status, it needs to be socializing and building bridges. In today’s day and age, blocking yourself off from the rest of the Internet is the equivalent of having a nation without running water or electricity. It’s utter barbarism, and who wants to be friends with barbarians? Maybe if I could have a horned hat, but that would be the only circumstance.
Then we get into the ideas of free speech and human rights. Censoring their Internet to only return and display search results that are government-approved is, well, Orwellian.
Using the Internet to hunt down human rights activists and imprison them is an entirely new ballpark. Oh, China. What are we going to do with you? You’re an epically powerful nation and yet you toddle around like a 3-year-old with a “mine!” complex.
The stand that’s being made against China needs to garner additional support if it is to be victorious. The corporations, firms and companies of the free capitalist world need to band together. This is a war, a war of the economy, fought over the Internet in our digital age.
The result of which will shape the future of free trade in the Pacific for decades to come. If we let them dictate all the terms now, China will never be a viable market. Of course, if China does cut us off, maybe some of that capital will come back here to the states. Or India, who at least plays nice.
[email protected]