Talking of coincidences – just on the day my last blog (on Can China Survive? Or will China Fail?) was posted, it turns out that the Washington Post had an article titled ‘Obeying Orders’ a piece that condemned Yahoo! for the help provided to the Chinese government on the journalist story – it appears as though Reporters Without Borders was among the first who cracked the story on the Yahoo! episode – for the unaware, the Chinese government approached Yahoo! in China and asked for information on a Chinese journalist who had sent out an e-mail to a website about the attempt made by the Chinese government to manipulate the media – Yahoo! gave in to the government request for the details on the journalist who was subsequently arrested. The Washington Post has condemned the Yahoo action, this has been followed by Tina Rosenberg of the New York Times writing in the International Herald Tribune and some neat articles in the San Francisco Chronicle on this and related subjects.
Ms. Rosenberg captures the situation very succinctly when she says and I quote ‘But let's not pretend that foreign investment will make China a democracy. That argument was born out of self-interest. Because China is too lucrative a market to resist, Western businessmen have ended up endorsing the party line through their silence - or worse. They are not molding China; China is molding them’.
The situation with respect to freedom of speech gets further amplified when you read that usage of the Chinese version of Skype is blocked in China – all this and some more articles on Chinese censorship are detailed at http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/.
Which leads me to believe that Corporate Responsibility as we know it is non-existent in China – think about it, folks – investing in China could end up becoming a one-way street and sooner or later a No Entry sign would be placed preventing western 'encroachment'. The Washington Post article of September 18 says and I quote ‘if, in fact, American companies are helping China become more authoritarian, more hostile and more of an obstacle to U.S. goals of democracy promotion around the world -- then it is time to rethink the rules under which they operate’.
Opinions, thoughts, ideas on this and other blogs at this site are most welcome – all prospective bloggers are encouraged to blog on – you will quite often find ads at the bottom of this blogsite that tell you how to get into blogging – remember, if I can, U can!
Goodday!
posted by sekhar @ 12:03 AM
1 Comments:
Anand,
Bear in mind that in doing as it did Yahoo!has seriously compromised its customer in this case 'the journalist' and essentially violated a customer/user's right to privacy- whether this will bring them extra points with the Chinese Govt. is a big ? the fact is that they had options such as hosting outside China etc. which could have given them adequate wriggle room - you make a good point when you say that China is probably furthering their cause with American help - I agree with you on that and so will many others - however, I believe that this situation has come about as a consequence and has to be dealt with in a pragmatic manner with US corporates coming up with a plan that can uphold American values of free speech and democracy while furthering capitalism.
Any thoughts on the 'what now' would be greatly appreciated.
Sekhar
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