Amnesty International Report and Internet Censorship In China

The claims that companies like Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google are making are absolutely abhorrent. Those companies should actually be making an effort to comply with international human rights standards rather than caving to the Chinese government at the slightest "law". I understand that internet companies are a little nebulous and illusory to be making huge, obvious stances for human rights, but they can do better than they have been doing. Their reaction is very typical of corporate America: just blame someone else and you won't have to actually do anything to remedy the situation. This reaction frustrates me because I am more ideologically and honor driven than economicly driven; I could never be the CEO of a multi-national corporation. Also, I know that some aspects of human rights complicate the market economic system, but some things are more important than profit. Like freedom of expression. Sure, some information is better than none, but freedom of information is better than partial information.

Foreign companies should comply with local laws. That being said, the Chinese Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and also states that "information cannot be disseminated which is against the principles of the Constitution." But the Chinese government pushes the companies to censor themselves. How much does the Chinese Constitution even mean, since the government is contradicting itself? By the government contradicting itself in this manner, it is impossible for the companies to know which "laws" to follow. Therefore, the companies should follow thier own codes of conduct (or even the laws of their home countries), which doesn't seem to be the case. Basically, the companies will do whatever they think will cause the least outcry, or whatever they think they can get away with.

Tiananmen Movement Video

The Chinese government feared a worker's rebellion more than they feared a student movement, basically because the party had come to power decades earlier because of a worker's movement. Once everyday citizens and workers became involved in the Tiananmen Square events, the government began to fear for their own power and cracked down on the protesters. The Tiananmen Square events forced the Chinese government to address (or appear to address) some of the issues important to the protesters. In order to do this, the government had to offer either economic reform or political reform. They would never reform politically so the only real option was economic reform: free-market capitalism.

This refom led to a huge rift opening between the wealthy and the workers. There are now two Chinas: the metropolitan, modern cities and the underdeveloped rural areas. The modern cities have benefitted from the economic reforms while the rural farming areas- which cover a majority of China- have slipped farther away from modernity. People from the rural areas move to the cities to work for the factories and get paid (if they get paid) the most minimal wages possible and then are forced to leave the cities before they can even benifit form the modernity of the cities. All of this migrant worker population is sinking farther and farther away from the wealth, prosperity, and growth that the factory owners and other wealthy people are experiencing. This split is causing increasing social unrest that the government doesn't know how to handle. This problem runs deeper than the government cares to acknowledge and this social unrest can only get worse before any solution will be attempted.