More on corporate responsibility in China

Coming on the heels of the Washington Post's dressing-down of Yahoo!, the New York Times' Tina Rosenberg has another excellent Op-Ed in the International Herald Tribune, with some strong words for U.S. tech companies who continue to claim that in the long run they're doing more to foster democracy in China than to impede it, despite the fact that they collaborate with censorship and in Yahoo!'s case, help convict journalists like Shi Tao. After detailing Yahoo!'s role in the Shi Tao case, she writes:

...America has a bipartisan human rights policy in China. It is called trade. The idea is that Western companies will bring Western values - especially when they develop the Internet, supposedly an unstoppable force for openness. But Shi's fate is the latest piece of evidence that it's not working out that way.

After further discussion Rosenberg concludes:

...In many important ways, foreign investment has been good for the Chinese people. It has lifted living standards greatly. China's desire to trade has encouraged new permission for thousands of Chinese to study abroad, which is also a force for liberalization. Foreign businesses have promoted legal reform, although largely in commercial law.

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.

Hear hear.

The San Fransisco Chronicle also had a good article on Sunday, Chinese Interent vs. free speech: Hard choices for U.S. tech giants. She asks the important question about what we actually expect these companies to do? Withdraw from China?  Should we boycott them?  Most of the people she interviews, including human rights activists, aren't advocating a boycott or disengagement. But there are suggestions for ways in which tech companies could do more to show they do actually care about keeping Chinese dissidents out of jail and about promoting free speech.  An extended excerpt:

Starting in the 1970s, U.S. companies with business in South Africa united in opposing apartheid there, and although their pact did not end the racist system, it is credited with bringing mainstream attention to the problem. U.S. Internet companies should follow that example and agree on guidelines for operating in China while respecting human rights and use the heft of the group to resist Chinese pressure, said Lori Tansey Martens, president of the International Business Ethics Institute in Washington, D.C. 

"I'm not asking Yahoo to do it alone," said Pain of Reporters Without Borders. "I'm asking Yahoo to discuss it with Google and Microsoft and find a common position."

Some suggest that U.S. companies continue following Chinese law but be a little less cooperative about it. Danny O'Brien, activism coordinator for San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation, suggested that Yahoo call attention to any future requests for information from the Chinese government.

"A perfectly reasonable thing for Yahoo to do within the legal framework is to comply but announce it publicly," O'Brien said. That's a strategy Google has used when complying with legal requirements in the United States to remove links to copyrighted material.

Companies could be less cooperative by using encryption and anonymizing technology, and avoiding storing unnecessary information about users, said Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and Oxford University's chairman in Internet governance and regulation.

No one suggested boycotting the major U.S. Internet firms.

"How much choice do you have if all of these companies are doing this?" asked Mickey Spiegel, a senior researcher in the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "We're not going to stop using the Internet."

"I don't think (a boycott) would make much difference," agreed Chinese activist in exile Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Instead, Xiao is focusing his energy on supporting Chinese bloggers and studying how the Chinese are using the latest social networking and Web browsing programs to communicate under the radar of the censors.

But there is one activist group that has taken up the cause of Internet freedom in China: investors.

Two asset management firms that concentrate on socially responsible investing have penned a shareholder resolution for Cisco Systems, which will come up for a vote at the company's next annual meeting. The resolution urges the company to draft and implement a human rights policy. It was submitted by Boston Common Asset Management, which holds 104,200 shares of Cisco common stock, and Domini Social Investments.

Cisco unsuccessfully challenged the resolution with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company said it has already done what the proposal suggests.

Comments

[Charlie Evett]

If we're not careful, the Chinese will be exporting their political ideas to us, in the coming years. As China's growth continues to run ahead of the U.S., I expect business leaders will begin to see the virtues of free-market authoritarianism. Especially when they return to the U.S. after being "molded" by the Chinese.

This is one reason I think it's important to push for reforms in China, because if we aren't moving in that direction, then flow of ideas will run the other way. When you don't stand for the rights of all, you will eventually lose your own.

[myrick]

Angry Chinese Blogger has something you may find of interest. Time Warner claims to have backed out of its AOL China venture rather than submit to CCP censorship demands, which - if true - I think deserves a bit of praise:

http://angrychineseblogger.blog-city.com/exposed__the_truth_behind_the_death_of_aolchina.htm
According to Chief Executive Officer Parsons, it was AOL-Time Warner who pulled out of the partnership with Legend in 2001 after authorities in Beijing made a series of unreasonable demands on the company in regards its joint Internet venture with Legend;
“[We were concerned about] what we would look like here in the U.S. if we agreed to a governmentally imposed regime where words like democracy had to be blocked" - Richard Parsons, Chief Executive, Time Warner

[myrick]

Sorry about that, the link is here