RConversation

On Google's license renewal and principled engagement

After a week of mixed signals and speculation (see previous blog post), the Chinese government has decided to renew Google's web license.

While a number of commentators are interpreting this as a "climbdown" or "wimp out" by Google, I don't understand how they have reached that conclusion. As I pointed out last week, the only thing that has changed since March is that after typing "google.cn" into the browser's address bar and hitting "return," users have to make one extra click before reaching the uncensored google.com.hk. While the google.cn page now includes links to music, translation, and shopping services, the search box you see there on the page is just a static image that takes you immediately to google.com.hk as soon as you click on it. If you have grade school literacy in Chinese it's extremely obvious from looking at that page that if you want to search anything other than music or shopping you can simply click through to google.com.hk. I don't see how adding the extra click prevents users of Google's general search from using the service any more than the direct redirection from google.cn to google.com.hk which Google implemented in March. Of course, if you are searching from inside China and don't know that you can add an "s" to the "http:" in the address box and avail yourself of the "https" encrypted function that make your searches invisible to the Chinese network operators, searches on politically sensitive terms will get blocked by the Great Firewall. But that has been true since the redirection began. It hasn't changed. So Google's change implemented last week has no substantive impact on what Chinese Internet users can or cannot access via google.cn.

The change has, however, brought them into technical compliance with the regulations. And the authorities - for whatever reason - have decided that this change is sufficient despite the fact that in spirit Google is no closer to compliance with their wishes than it was in late March.

Since Chinese regulators don't confide in me personally I can only speculate on their motivations. It seems that the pragmatists have prevailed over the ideologues in this case. If Google's web license were to be denied, Google would be shut out of China completely. That sends a very negative message to the international business community, which is already concerned about China's politicized business environment. Questions would be raised about barriers to trade. The problem could be taken to the governmental level at a time when the last thing the U.S. and China need is more cause for tension. Now that Google.cn is in technical legal compliance and the uncensored search engine has been taken offshore out of mainland Chinese jurisdiction to Hong Kong where it is perfectly legal, it's better for Chinese regulators to declare victory and allow Google to pursue business activities in China that do not run afoul of Chinese regulations: R&D, advertising sales, mobile operating platforms, etc.

Another reason why it's in China's interest to let Google engage in China despite its resistance to censorship has to do with China's long term strategy for economic competitiveness and innovation. As the recent government white paper on the Internet made clear, Internet and mobile services are a core component of China's strategy for success as a global economic powerhouse. Keeping out foreign competition might be good for Chinese companies in the short term, but not in the long term. If Chinese companies are going to compete with the world's most innovative companies, they're not going to succeed if they're sheltered from competition in their home market because the domestic business environment is excessively political. I know that many influential CEO's of China's most successful Internet and telecoms companies certainly believe that an over-insulated market is not good for their businesses in the long run.  It is my impression that this point has been getting made, quietly, to people in the government over the past few months. This point of view has even managed to surface into the public domain here and there on the Internet. One of the most compelling examples were remarks made by Edward Tian, "the father of Chinese broadband" at an IT industry forum held in Shenzhen in late March soon after Google began redirecting google.cn to google.com.hk. Tian said (translated by Luke Habberstad at China Digital Times):

You ask: who is the winner? Is Li Yanhong (co-founder of Baidu) the winner? This is hard to say. After Google left, many angry youth in our country said this was good. However, Google is also China’s best tool for understanding the West. In order to make the West understand the achievements of China’s reform and opening, many have to search through Google. Baidu maybe needs 10 or 20 more years before it can be acceptable to the Internet users of the West. It is possible that our reform and opening has lost a great tool for external publicity. We have to consider a question from two sides.

The second problem. Google is not just for searching. Google represents the future of information technology, since the Google search engine and Google cloud computing [support IT technology] behind the scenes. When we make this sort of company such a big rival, are we not also rejecting these technologies? Let us consider the accomplishments we have now achieved with a modernized core attitude. They came precisely from having an open mind. We brought over the Western invention of mobile communication and the Western invention of photo-communication, and took the title of being the nation with the largest telecommunications company in the world (China Mobile), thus achieving a leap in development. In the future, software technology might emerge in a form that uses Google services. Can we simply follow one sentence from Comrade Lenin and then throw the baby out with the bath water? We need to consider these questions.

Perhaps the people who approved Google's license found such arguments convincing, and in this case chose the long-term economic interests of the Chinese people over victory in one small skirmish.

On Google's part, they retain a foothold in the Chinese market while remaining true to their January pledge that they would no longer censor their Chinese search engine. And yes, I ran some tests today with politically sensitive Chinese-language terms on Google.com.hk. The results were not identical to Google.com because all the local Google search engines favor local content more heavily (thus results are not the same on Google.fr, Google.de, or Google.jp vs Google.com either). But I found no evidence of political censorship. For example: in a search for the Chinese language words for "Tiananmen square massacre" Google.com.hk returns all kinds of material containing details of June 4th 1989 carnage including graphic videos at the top of the video search.

Some commentators are slamming Google for capitulating because the company wants to remain engaged in China at all. Frankly I don't think that the cause of freedom and openness in China would be well served if all Western Internet companies pulled out of China completely. I don't believe its a simple matter of all-in or all-out, engage or disengage, with nothing in between. What's important is how you engage. Are your business practices, products and services helping to move things in a more open direction? Or are you collaborating with the surveillance and jailing of dissidents and providing cover and legitimacy to the world's most sophisticated censorship system? I believe it can be possible to engage in China while upholding core principles on free expression and privacy. To say that it isn't easy is a massive understatement. I'm not saying Google has always done everything right or that they won't make mistakes in the future - in China or elsewhere. But I am hopeful that they will continue find it in their global, long-term business interest to try to do the right thing, correct their mistakes and acknowledge wrongdoing when that happens, and continue to work with activists and socially responsible investors to prove that principled engagement is not only possible, but necessary.

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Google.cn added ICP license number on Monday

Beijing News is reporting (in Chinese) that one of their reporters noticed on Monday that the Google.cn landing page has added an ICP license number dated 2010. The license number had not been there before. The reporter then confirmed with Wang Jinhong, director of public relations for Google China, that the license number had been newly added. Three other links to "Music," "Translate," and "Shopping" were also added. The report did not clarify whether the addition of the ICP license means that the Chinese authorities have renewed Google.cn's ICP license after Google announced on June 28th that it has changed the way in which users are re-directed from Google.cn to Google.com.hk.

The article reports that Google's current ICP license, issued in June 2007, is valid for five years but requires annual review. It was issued to the joint venture company jointly owned by Google and the Beijing Gu Xiang Information Technology Co. Ltd. 

I've put in a query to people I know at Google but today is a national holiday in the United States. It's possible we may see some clarification on the Official Google Blog on Tuesday morning California time, or maybe journalists' queries will get answered in the coming hours and the reports will start to appear.

Veteran China Internet watchers may recall that Google launched Google.cn in January 2006 without an ICP license. It is my understanding that the Google-Gu Xiang joint venture was set up for the sole purpose of obtaining an ICP license. It is also my understanding that R&D and advertising operations technically operate through different companies. 

If anybody has additional information or rumors they'd like to share, please feel free.

(UPDATE: Gizmodo has more speculation here: Have Google And China Resolved Their Issues?)

FURTHER NOTE: It's very possible this is a total false alarm, that no decision has yet been made, and that Google is just making their new landing page as official and legal as possible, in hopes that the decision will eventually be in their favor and perhaps also to re-assure confused users that the page is legit and not fake. It's also worth pointing out that - given that Google launched Google.cn without any ICP license at all and operated for a long time without one initially, it's very possible that the authorities could take weeks before any decision gets made. Who knows.

UPDATE 2: Google P.R.  has issued a statement:

"what you are seeing on the landing page is just our existing ICP license number at the bottom of the landing page. We have no news to report on our side and are still waiting to hear from the government."

Google's China troubles continue; Congress examines U.S. investment in Chinese censorship

In his latest blog post, Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond reports that Chinese authorities aren't happy with the automatic redirection of Google.cn to Hong Kong. They are threatening not to renew Google's Internet Content Provider license, which is required to legally operate any kind of Internet business in China. In an attempt to thread the legal needle, Drummond says Google.cn will now lead to a landing page which - if you click anywhere on that page - takes the user to the uncensored Google.com.hk. This is Google's convoluted way of adjusting Google.cn so that it remains technically in compliance with Chinese law while still sending Chinese users to an uncensored site. Now they just have to click through an extra page to get to the results.

It's unclear whether this will be acceptable to the Chinese authorities. It really depends on how secure or insecure they're feeling these days. In the meantime, the new landing page is a signal to Chinese users that they may want to remember Google.com.hk just in case Google.cn ceases to work, or update their browser bookmark.

What will happen next?  Any one of four scenarios is possible:

1. The Chinese government renews Google's ICP license and Google.com.hk remains unblocked. Google.cn remains just a landing page which sends users to Google.com.hk when they click anywhere on the page. While Google.com.hk remains unblocked, though specific searches containing sensitive words will continue to be blocked. Nothing has changed except that users have to click through an extra page before they can start searching.

2. The Chinese government renews Google's ICP license but blocks Google.com.hk. People can get to the landing page via Google.cn, but after clicking on it they get an error message in their browser. Users who don't know how to use circumvention tools will no longer be able to continue accessing Google's uncensored search (unless they know to go to Google.com which as of now, I believe, remains unblocked).

3. The Chinese government does not renew Google's ICP license but does not block Google.com.hk. Google.cn will no longer work. Chinese Internet users will be able to access Google.com.hk if they happen know enough to type a different URL into their browser.

4. The Chinese government does not renew Google's ICP license and also blocks Google.com.hk. In this case, users will only be able to access the Hong Kong-based uncensored search if a) they know about the Google.com.hk URL and b) know how to use proxy servers or circumvention tools.

Which one do you predict? Let me know in the comments section if you'd like.

Meanwhile, it just so happens that tomorrow the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission will be holding a hearing on "China's Information Control Practices and the Implications for the United States." I've been asked to testify on Baidu's role in China's Internet censorship system and the role played by U.S. investment in Chinese Internet censorship. My written testimony can be downloaded here (PDF).

I begin by describing China's recent political innovation which I call networked authoritarianism. I then explain how the private sector in general - and Baidu in particular - fits into this system. I discuss the impact of Google's withdrawal from China, then conclude with some comments about the role of U.S. investment. Here is my conclusion:

The question is: Even as government censorship requirements grow increasingly onerous, dominant players solidify and expand their market positions at the expense of smaller upstarts, and the frustration of many Chinese Internet executives grows, will anybody in the Chinese business community dare to challenge the government policies and practices that have caused this situation? Or will they continue to feel that they have no choice if they want to continue making money?

As I have described in my testimony, the Chinese government has transferred much of the cost of censorship to the private sector. The American investment community has so far been willing to fund Chinese innovation in censorship technologies and systems without complaint or objection. Under such circumstances, Chinese industry leaders have little incentive and less encouragement to resist government demands that often contradict even China’s own laws and constitution.

Two of Baidu’s five Directors are American. U.S. investors provided much of Baidu’s startup capital. U.S. institutional investors own significant stakes in the company.To be fair, American investment dollars support many businesses around the world that human rights groups and environmentalists have identified as unethical or destructive to our health and our planet. Yet in the wake of the financial crisis and the BP oil spill, it is also clear that millions of people around the world are paying an unacceptably high price for unethical – or at very least amoral – investment practices. We will not see the end of our problems unless industry and investors own up to their broader responsibilities to society and to the planet. I predict that the prospects for freedom and democracy around the world will similarly be diminished if our investments continue to support censorship and surveillance.

For the ethical investor, there are two possible responses to this problem. One is divestment from all ethically challenging situations. The other is engagement and advocacy, using financial leverage to work for positive change in industry practices and even government regulation.  Such efforts often require patience and take time to bear fruit, but experience in other sectors such as mining and manufacturing show that proactive, socially responsible investment combined with advocacy and engagement can make a difference over time.

I believe the Chinese people would be worse off if all American companies and investors were to abandon the Chinese Internet. Investors who remain silent, however, should be clear about what kind of innovation they are financing. In addition to whatever product or service they set out to invest in, they are also supporting a disturbing new political innovation: networked authoritarianism.

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China's Internet White Paper: networked authoritarianism in action

The release of the Chinese government's first-ever White Paper on the Internet in China provoked some head-scratching here in the Western world. Part Three of the six-part document is titled "Guaranteeing Citizens' Freedom of Speech on the Internet." I've heard from several journalists and policy analysts (not people based in China, for whom such cognitive dissonance is normal) who at first glance thought they were reading The Onion or some kind of parody site. How, people asked me, can a government that so blatantly censors the Internet claim with a straight face to be protecting and upholding freedom of speech on the Internet? The answer of course is that China's netizens are free to do everything... except for the things they're not free to do.  The list of the latter, outlined in the next section titled Protecting Internet Security is long, vague, and subject to considerable interpretation:

...The Chinese government attaches great importance to protecting the safe flow of Internet information, actively guides people to manage websites in accordance with the law and use the Internet in a wholesome and correct way. The Decision of the National People's Congress Standing Committee on Guarding Internet Security, Regulations on Telecommunications of the People's Republic of China and Measures on the Administration of Internet Information Services stipulate that no organization or individual may produce, duplicate, announce or disseminate information having the following contents: being against the cardinal principles set forth in the Constitution; endangering state security, divulging state secrets, subverting state power and jeopardizing national unification; damaging state honor and interests; instigating ethnic hatred or discrimination and jeopardizing ethnic unity; jeopardizing state religious policy, propagating heretical or superstitious ideas; spreading rumors, disrupting social order and stability; disseminating obscenity, pornography, gambling, violence, brutality and terror or abetting crime; humiliating or slandering others, trespassing on the lawful rights and interests of others; and other contents forbidden by laws and administrative regulations.

Other than that, people are totally free. What's more, the use of the Internet by the people to "supervise" public officials is praised. As long as - in the process of said supervision - state power is not subverted, "state honor" is not jeopardized, nobody is humiliated or slandered, and no "rumors" are spread. The rise of Twitter-like microblogging services is even praised. (Twitter itself is blocked by the "great firewall," though tens of thousands of Chinese Internet users are believed to access it anyway through third-party clients and circumvention tools).

As I've frequently pointed out in the past (see here, here and here for starters), blocking of foreign websites like Twitter is just the top layer of Chinese Internet censorship. Beneath the "great firewall of China" is a sophisticated system by which censorship is delegated to the private sector. The first company to set up a Chinese Twitter-clone was a startup called Fanfou. Last June they got shut down because they failed to police the service adequately: users apparently shared too much content that violated the above no-no list. Other micro-blog services have since emerged. One run by the People's Daily and another by the popular web portal Sina.com. They seem to have learned from Fanfou's troubles and have put aggressive censorship systems in place. As Chen Tong, Sina's head editor, recently commented at a 3G Wireless Industry Summit: "controlling content in Sina microblogs is a problem which is a very big headache." (The Shanghaiist blog reports that the Sina.com news article reporting Chen's comments has itself been censored, but not before getting quoted and reported around the Internet.) According to the Sina.com account of his remarks, Chen went on to describe Sina's microblog-censorship strategy in some detail: 24-7 policing; constant coordination between the editorial department and the "monitoring department" (all social networking companies in China must have one of those in order to stay in compliance with government expectations);  daily meetings; and systems through which both editors and users are constantly reporting problematic content. 

Even so, Chen Tong says in his speech that microblogging has been tremendously empowering in China. He says that micro-blogs have become "people's personal web portals" and that a lot of recent incidents that have generated widespread public concern first emerged on microblogs.

Despite all the policing and the round-the-clock censorship, Chinese Internet users still feel much more empowered to participate in public discourse and even bring issues to national attention than they ever could have imagined in the past. (See Guobin Yang's excellent book, The Power of the Internet in China for many examples.) As I described it to one journalist, it's as if a bird that has lived in a cage all its life (one which has been gradually upgraded, with steadily improving food and which is much cleaner than it used to be) suddenly gets released into a large atrium. The bird is likely to feel excited and empowered for quite some time and may not realize that even broader freedom is possible or even desirable: after all, without the atrium walls might she get lost and starve? Or get eaten by other birds? There are plenty of security arguments in favor of supporting the atrium's legitimacy and necessity; there are even ethical justifications. 

Thus China is pioneering what I call "networked authoritarianism." Compared to classic authoritarianism, networked authoritarianism permits – or shall we say accepts the Internet’s inevitable consequences and adjusts – a lot more give-and-take between government and citizens than in a pre-Internet authoritarian state. While one party remains in control, a wide range of conversations about the country’s problems rage on websites and social networking services. The government follows online chatter, and sometimes people are even able to use the Internet to call attention to social problems or injustices, and even manage to have an impact on government policies. As a result, the average person with Internet or mobile access has a much greater sense of freedom – and may even feel like they have the ability to speak and be heard – in ways that weren’t possible under classic authoritarianism. It also makes most people a lot less likely to join a movement calling for radical political change. In many ways, the regime actually uses the Internet not only to extend its control but also to enhance its legitimacy.

At the same time, in the networked authoritarian state there is no guarantee of individual rights and freedoms. People go to jail when the powers-that-be decide they are too much of a threat – and there’s nothing anybody can do about it. Truly competitive, free and fair elections do not happen. The courts and the legal system are tools of the ruling party. 

Connecting every citizen in China to the Internet via multiple devices might sound like something the Chinese Communist Party would want to avoid. Several people who contacted me about China's Internet White Paper were surprised at the Chinese government's enthusiasm for connectivity. Such enthusiasm does not jive with most American and European notions of how an authoritarian state would be run by a party that calls itself Communist. What's important to understand is that Chinese authoritarianism in the Internet age is not the same as the crumbling, centrally-planned authoritarianism of the Eastern Bloc, disconnected from the Western capitalist world.

The CCP leadership recognizes that they can’t control everybody all the time if they’re going to be a technologically advanced global economic powerhouse. What’s more, high Internet penetration is necessary if the Chinese government wants to continue high rates of economic growth, which economists agree requires boosting domestic consumer demand as well as pushing Chinese companies to the cutting edge of technological innovation.  China catapulted itself to become the world’s second largest economy by turning itself into the world’s factory. But Chinese labor has grown expensive compared to some other markets in poorer countries. In order to stay competitive and keep growing, China needs to transition from a manufacturing-fueled economy to an economy fueled by domestic consumption at home, while being an innovator for advanced technologies and services that can compete with American and European companies. 

Another component of the Chinese Communist Party’s survival strategy involves influencing the Internet’s technical evolution in ways that are most compatible with censorship and surveillance goals. China already has more Internet users than there are Americans on the planet. As the world’s biggest market for Internet technologies, it is starting to influence how these technologies evolve. The Internet is quickly morphing from something we’ve mainly used through our computers into a new, more mobile phase in which all devices, appliances and vehicles – from our phones to our cars to our refrigerators – will be connected to the network. The Chinese government is embracing this future. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao now gives speeches in which he waxes enthusiastic about the “Internet of things.”  Chinese Internet and telecommunications companies receive substantial government support in hopes that they will lead the world in shaping the next generation of Internet technologies.

Beyond China, the fastest-growing markets for mobile Internet technologies are in Asia, the Middle East and Africa: exactly those parts of the world where authoritarian governments are most concentrated. Chinese telecommunications companies like Huawei and ZTE (the “Ciscos of China”) are already dominant in many African and Middle Eastern markets. They are building Internet and mobile networks in countries whose governments would prefer to have their systems built by Chinese engineers rather than by Americans.

Another thing that has puzzled some of the American journalists and analysts who contacted me is the Chinese government's assertion of its "sovereignty" on the Internet, given that the Internet is a globally inter-connected network and derives much of its value from the fact that borders are collapsed online. Yet at the same time, it's a physical reality that web sites have to be hosted physically on computers that are located in some jurisdiction or another; they are operated by physical human beings who reside under a government jurisdiction and can thus be physically controlled when necessary; they are operated by businesses that have to be registered in one or more jurisdiction and their physical operations are subject to government regulation; and the Internet runs on networks that physically exist within or pass through nation-states. The White Paper is a clear articulation of the Chinese government's long-standing position that nation-states should have "sovereignty" over all aspects of the Internet - human or equipment or signal - that reside within or pass through Chinese sovereign territory. Google is challenging this notion as it pushes the U.S. government to take action against China for violating WTO rules by using censorship as a barrier to trade. (For further discussion of China and Internet sovereignty see this Interview with Columbia University's Tim Wu conducted by The New Yorker's Evan Osnos.)

The White Paper also re-emphasizes the Chinese government's long-standing position that the global coordination tasks required to make the Internet function - what Internet policy wonks call "Internet governance" - are best left to governments, not private entities or companies or others.  The White Paper did not condemn ICANN, the private non-profit which coordinates the Internet's domain name system - in fact it didn't even mention ICANN or other non-governmental organizations that coordinate the Internet's functions and anoint preferred global technical standards. Nor did it say anything negative about the "multi-stakeholder" governance approach currently favored by Western democracies, which includes non-governmental "civil society" organizations alongside governments and companies. But the document made clear China's position that " the UN should be given full scope in international Internet administration." As Brendan Kuerbis of the Internet Governance Project puts it, China is not intending to disengage from the existing Internet governance frameworks, but can be expected to exert its influence in shaping these frameworks in its preferred direction.

The White Paper's message is that the Chinese government is not running scared from the Internet. It is embracing the Internet head-on, intends to be a leader in its global evolution, and intends to assert its influence on how the global Internet is governed and regulated.

Note that China is not the only country seeking to assert its brand of Internet sovereignty. For an analysis of what's happening in Russia, read this chilling overview by Gregory Aslomov at Global Voices. For more on the Russia situation as well as an alarming global overview, be sure to read “Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace” just published by the Open Net Initiative.

On a more optimistic note, the White Paper does have its domestic critics. Blogger, journalist and journalism professor Hu Yong argues (writing on a domestic blog which has not been censored) that most of the regulations governing the Chinese Internet have no clear basis in Chinese law and are arguably unconstitutional. "At a time when the Internet is raising a lot of questions that we don't have answers to," he writes, "the government may not have the best solutions. It's possible that the Internet could give birth to new forms of regulation that aren't as coercive, and which place greater trust in the strength of individual freedom and the self-governance of citizens." While the Internet does need to be regulated, he concludes, the public needs to participate in the creation of those regulations. 

But as long as all of China's Internet companies and the few foreign Internet companies with a local presence in China continue to do whatever the government demands, no matter how little legal or constitutional legitimacy such demands might have, the government will have little incentive to accept the kind of change that Hu Yong envisions. Note that many of the big Chinese companies receive American investment dollars or are publicly traded on U.S. stock exchanges, sending a clear message that whatever U.S. elected officials might say about "Internet freedom," many American investors are quite happy to profit from China's status quo.

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Reactions from China on Google

"Fauna" at ChinaSMACK has done a valuable public service by hanging out in Chinese forums and translating netizen reaction to Google.cn's relocation to Hong Kong. Read the whole post here. Fauna observes that a lot of comments on the major Chinese web portals have been deleted, leaving up the ones most favorable to the Chinese government and most critical of Google. Keeping one step ahead of the censors - just to capture some of the more nuanced comments before they were deleted proved to be a challenge:

Many Chinese netizen comments have been deleted or hidden and most comments that remain visible clearly support the government or are critical of Google. You can see this in the translated comments from NetEase above.

On KDS, a popular Shanghai BBS discussion forum, I was able to find some comments in support of Google or critical of the government before they were deleted. KDS moderators first deleted posts with many replies before deleting the smaller posts with fewer replies. Many posts were deleted while I was still collecting comments from them.

One of the comments Fauna caught before it disappeared was this one:

"Wumao are rampant, they better secure their overtime pay. What we need is the truth, how are sensitive terms defined? What will not die is whatever TG [The Government] says, that everything that it does not like are sensitive words, keeping the people in the dark.  "

The posting includes this cartoon, which doesn't really require translation:

 

[Translation: "Too f***ing stinky! I'm not f***ing eating with you guys anymore!"]

Will Microsoft's Bing now be content to eat s**t alongside Baidu? Or will they make a serious effort to improve the nutritional value of the Chinese Internet? I asked that question in a column for CNN.com yesterday.

On a related note, China Digital Times has translated orders from the State Council Information Office to news organizations and websites:

All chief editors and managers:

Google has officially announced its withdrawal from the China market. This is a high-impact incident. It has triggered netizens’ discussions which are not limited to a commercial level. Therefore please pay strict attention to the following content requirements during this period:

A. News Section

1. Only use Central Government main media (website) content; do not use content from other sources
2. Reposting must not change title
3. News recommendations should refer to Central government main media websites
4. Do not produce relevant topic pages; do not set discussion sessions; do not conduct related investigative reporting;
5. Online programs with experts and scholars on this matter must apply for permission ahead of time. This type of self-initiated program production is strictly forbidden.
6. Carefully manage the commentary posts under news items.

B. Forums, blogs and other interactive media sections:

1. It is not permitted to hold discussions or investigations on the Google topic
2. Interactive sections do not recommend this topic, do not place this topic and related comments at the top
3. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which attack the Party, State, government agencies, Internet policies with the excuse of this event.
4. All websites please clean up text, images and sound and videos which support Google, dedicate flowers to Google, ask Google to stay, cheer for Google and others have a different tune from government policy
5. On topics related to Google, carefully manage the information in exchanges, comments and other interactive sessions
6. Chief managers in different regions please assign specific manpower to monitor Google-related information; if there is information about mass incidents, please report it in a timely manner.

We ask the Monitoring and Control Group to immediately follow up monitoring and control actions along the above directions; once any problems are discovered, please communicate with respected sessions in a timely manner.

China, the Internet and Google: Congressional testimony

Tomorrow the Congressional Executive China Commission will conduct a hearing titled Google and Internet Control in China: A Nexus Between Human Rights and Trade?  They had originally invited me to testify in a similarly titled hearing, "China, the Internet and Google," which was postponed and rescheduled twice: the first attempt was foiled by the Great Snowcalypse; the second attempt scheduled for March 1st was postponed again at the last minute for some reason that isn't entirely clear. Meanwhile I had already gone and written my testimony. When they rescheduled the hearing they said I was no longer invited, as they wanted the hearing to have different witnesses from recent related hearings in both the House and Senate. Given that I appeared in both hearings it seems reasonable that they'd want to hear from some other people.

Since I put some effort into my testimony, however, and since it drills down in a lot more detail on China than my testimony for the other hearings, I think there is some value in my sharing it with the world.

WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE: A Commission staffer just called me to say that they had meant to contact me about including the written testimony in the hearing's official record, but that the email somehow had not been sent. They now plan to distribute copies of it at the hearing and may quote from it during the proceedings. Click here for the updated PDF or click here for the web version. Some highlights:

From the introduction:

China is pioneering a new kind of Internet-age authoritarianism. It is demonstrating how a non-democratic government can stay in power while simultaneously expanding domestic Internet and mobile phone use.  In China today there is a lot more give-and-take between government and citizens than in the pre-Internet age, and this helps bolster the regime’s legitimacy with many Chinese Internet users who feel that they have a new channel for public discourse. Yet on the other hand, as this Commission’s 2009 Annual Report clearly outlined, Communist Party control over the bureaucracy and courts has strengthened over the past decade, while the regime’s institutional commitments to protect the universal rights and freedoms of all its citizens have weakened.

Google’s public complaint about Chinese cyber-attacks and censorship occurred against this backdrop.  It reflects a recognition that China’s status quo – at least when it comes to censorship, regulation,and manipulation of the Internet – is unlikely to improve any time soon, and may in fact continue to get worse.

Overview of Chinese Internet controls

Chinese government attempts to control online speech began in the late 1990’s with a focus on the filtering or “blocking” of Internet content. Today, the government deploys an expanding repertoire of tactics.

In other words, filtering is just one of many ways that the Chinese government limits and controls speech on the Internet. The full text then gives descriptions and explanations of the other tactics, but in brief they include:

• deletion or removal of content at the source
• device and local-level controls
• domain name controls
• localized disconnection or restriction
• self-censorship due to surveillance
• cyber-attacks
• government "astro-turfing" and "outreach"
• targeted police intimidation

I then describe a number of efforts by Chinese netizens to push back against these tactics, which include (see the full text for further explanation):

• informal anti-censorship support networks
• distributed web-hosting assistance networks
• crowdsourced "opposition research"
• preservation and redistribution of censored content
• humorous "viral" protests
• public persuasion efforts

I end with a set of recommendations. Once again, see the full text for explanations, but here is the basic list:

• anti-censorship tools - including outreach and education in their use
• anonymity and security tools - to help people better defend against cyber-attacks, spyware, and surveillance
• platforms and networks for the capture, storage, and redistribution of content that gets deleted from domestic social networking and publishing services
• support for "opposition research" - remember the Chinese netizens who deconstructed Green Dam?
• corporate responsibility - see Global Network Initiative, but also appropriate legislation if American and other Western Internet companies fail to accept the idea that they have some obligations as far as free expression and privacy are concerned
• private right of action - so that Chinese victims can sue U.S. companies in U.S. courts
• incentives for innovation by the private sector that helps Chinese Internet users access blocked sites as well as protect themselves from attacks and surveillance.

My conclusion:

Many of China’s 384 million Internet users are engaged in passionate debates about their communities’ problems, public policy concerns, and their nation’s future. Unfortunately these public discussions are skewed, blinkered, and manipulated – thanks to political censorship and surveillance. The Chinese people are proud of their nation’s achievements and generally reject critiques by outsiders even if they agree with some of them. A democratic alternative to China’s Internet-age authoritarianism will only be viable if it is conceived and built by the Chinese people from within. In helping Chinese “netizens” conduct an un-manipulated and un-censored discourse about their future, the United States will not imposing its will on the Chinese people, but rather helping the Chinese people to take ownership over their own future.

"One Google, One World; One China, No Google"

China's insomniac twitterati were on fire this afternoon U.S. time, powered no doubt by much caffeine and sugar in the the wee hours of the morning in China. Half an hour before Google's David Drummond posted his announcement that Google.cn is now effectively operating from Google.com.hk, Guangzhou-based open source programmer @LEMONed broke the news that google.cn was being redirected to the Hong Kong service. Reacting to the news, @wentommy quipped: "One Google, One World; One China, No Google."

As of now (still early morning in Beijing), Google.com.hk is accessible from mainland China although specific search results for sensitive terms result in a browser error - or in other words, are blocked. Same as it's always been for sensitive searches on Google.com from inside mainland China. This is network filtering and would happen automatically as part of the "great firewall" Internet filtering system.

The ball is now in the Chinese government's court in two ways:

1) Whether they will block all of google.com.hk, which until now has not been blocked. If they are smart they will just leave the situation as is and stop drawing media attention to their censorship practices. The longer this high profile fracas goes on, the greater Chinese Internet users awareness will be about the lengths to which their government goes to blinker their knowledge of the world. That may inspire more people to start learning how to use circumvention tools for getting around the censorship. Chinese censorship is only effective if a large percentage of the population isn't very conscious of what they're missing. As I like to explain it: if you're born with tunnel vision you assume it's normal until somehow you're made aware that life without tunnel vision is both possible and much better. The longer this story remains in the headlines, the more people will become conscious of their tunnel vision and think about ways to eliminate it.

2) Whether they allow Google to retain its ad sales and R&D businesses in China.  Google has now removed the part of the business that might have defied Chinese law, relocating it to a jurisdiction where websites are not required to censor political speech. The remaining parts of Google's business should be able to operate within the confines of Chinese law without much problem. If the Chinese government is smart, they will declare victory for having forced Google to back down and remove its potentially illegal operation from their jurisdiction. They should say they welcome all foreign law-abiding businesses and look forward to working with Google as long as it abides by Chinese law. If they punish Google further for events of the past few months, that will further feed the anxiety of a foreign business community who have already been complaining of unfair and politicized treatment, and it will cause the U.S.-China business and trade relationship to deteriorate further in ways that I would think are not in China's interest - certainly not in the Chinese people's interest.

As it so happens, I interviewed David Drummond on December 15th for the Index on Censorship, but due to the magazine's long production time they're just publishing it now, with an update that we did with him via e-mail after the January 12th announcement. They've posted it online today. I think a lot of it remains very relevant.

UPDATE1: For journalists trying to get their heads around this story Andrew Lih has an excellent primer on the basic facts and background you need to know.

UPDATE2: The Chinese government is reacting in a knee-jerk and counterproductive manner which implies that they think they should have jurisdiction over websites hosted on computer servers physically beyond their borders, and which implies disrespect for the Hong Kong Basic Law to which the CCP made a clear commitment.  See Reuters for the text of the Chinese official comments on Google.

ADDENDUM: Here's the post I wrote in 2006 when Google went into China with Google.cn: Google in China: degrees of evil final conclusion: "At the end of the day, this compromise puts Google a little lower on the evil scale than many other internet companies in China. But is this compromise something Google should be proud of? No. They have put a foot further into the mud. Now let's see whether they get sucked in deeper or whether they end up holding their ground."

Chinese netizens' open letter to the Chinese Government and Google

The Chinese characters in the orange cloud above say "netizens." 

Some Chinese netizens who feel caught between Google and their government have written an open letter to "relevant Chinese government ministries and Google Inc."  It's got a very long preamble which I hope somebody will take the time to translate in full. [MONDAY NOONTIME UPDATE: A full translation has now been completed here.] In a nutshell, it expresses the view that Chinese Internet users have been left in the dark. While it's assumed that the Chinese government would seek to keep its people in the dark - hence its censorship in the first place - they find it unfair that Google has not provided them with enough information to form educated and fact-based opinions about what's going on. The authors raise a list of questions they want answered (corrections to my rough translation welcome in the comments section):

• Did Google meet the requirements of Chinese law in censoring material related to porn, violence, and gambling?
• How were the Chinese government's censorship demands communicated to Google? From which ministry? According to what legal processes? Were there any mechanisms for correcting mistakes or channels for appeal?
• What content did the Chinese government require Google to self-censor? Aside from sex, violence and gambling, what else was included? How was the censorship decided for topics such as mining disasters, the brick kiln slave children, Yilishen, violent evictions, Sanlu milk powder, Deng Yujiao, the governor's confiscation of a journalist's recorder, the Shanxi vaccine scandal, and other incidents? We cannot accept violation of the public's right to access such public interest information.
• When it comes to activities by government leaders and ministries that violate the constitution and the laws beneath it, is it necessary to carry out unconstitutional censorship?
• Why can't the Internet industry, including Google, Baidu, and ICT companies accept public supervision and resolve the content regulation problem in an open manner?  Including but not limited to cooperation with an independent third-party citizens' body?
• What is the status of talks between Google and the Chinese government? What problems have been discussed? Cannot the irreconcilable positions of each side be clearly revealed to the public?
• If Google.cn were to no longer exist, or if China were to further block other Google services, has the Chinese government considered how their blocking of foreign websites and censorship of domestic websites violates Chinese citizens' right to scientific, educational, environmental, clean energy and other information? How will this loss be lessened or compensated for?

The letter concludes with several statements about censorship. "We support necessary censorship of Internet content and communications, whether it is on Google or any other foreign or domestic company," the authors write. "But we hope that such censorship should be conducted as follows:"

• It should be based on clear laws, the related regulations and censorship procedures should not violate China's constitution and laws. Vague censorship standards result in over-censorship or make it impossible to self-censor.
• Pre-censorship should not be carried out, as the right to free expression as guaranteed by the Chinese constitution and laws must not be violated.
• The procedures must be transparent, with clear and distinct censorship processes and steps. The censorship must be carried out by a clearly specified government department. It shouldn't be so vague that it is carried out by "relevant departments" which the public cannot locate.
• There should be a channel for appeals by netizens and by companies so that anybody who objects to a particular act of censorship can obtain reconsideration or file suit. Chinese legal bodies should clearly designated a channel for redress.
• The Chinese people's attention to and discourse about matters of public concern must not be obstructed. The public's right to study, scientific inquiry, communication, and commercial activity must not be inhibited.

On Saturday the Washington Post's John Pomfret reported poignantly about Chinese netizens' angst over the potential loss of Google. Everything I've been hearing from my own friends and contacts certainly backs up his story. But I'm also hearing from many people that the "Google China incident" - as many Chinese call it - has greatly heightened awareness among normally apolitical Chinese Internet users about the extent of Internet censorship in their country. It has sparked a lot of debate and soul searching about the extent to which their government is causing them to be isolated from the rest of the world.

The letter above also shows that this incident has sparked a debate among Chinese digerati about how Internet companies should be held accountable not only to - but by - the public. 

Google executives never responded to Chinese blogger Isaac Mao's open letter to them in 2007, offering the help and advice of Chinese netizens on how to do good and avoid doing evil in China. Given that the Chinese government is unlikely to respond to this latest letter, and given that its authors have taken a risk to speak out, I hope that Google will demonstrate that it truly does care about Chinese netizens and answer their questions.

Google Buzzkill

The launch of Google Buzz, the new social networking service tied to GMail, was a fiasco to say the least. Its default settings exposed people's e-mail contacts in frightening ways with serious privacy and human rights implications. Evgeny Morozov, who specializes in analyzing how authoritarian regimes use the Internet, put it bluntly last Friday in a blog post: "If I were working for the Iranian or the Chinese government, I would immediately dispatch my Internet geek squads to check on Google Buzz accounts for political activists and see if they have any connections that were previously unknown to the government."

According to the BBC, the Buzz development team bypassed Google's standard trial and testing procedures in order to launch the product quickly. Apparently, the company only tested it internally with Google employees and failed to test the product with a more diverse range of users who are more likely to have brought up the issues which were so glaringly obvious after launch. Google has apologized and moved to correct the most eggregious privacy flaws, though problems - including security issues - continue to be raised. PC World has a good overview of Buzz's evolution since launch.

Meanwhile, damage has been done not only to Google's reputation but also to an unknown number of users who found themselves and their contacts exposed in ways they did not choose or want. Exposing vulnerable users without their knowledge or choice even for a few hours can potentially have irreversible consequences. While Google is scoring some points around the tech policy world for reacting quickly and earnestly to the strident user outcry, the Electronic Information Privacy Center (EPIC) has filed an official complaint with the FTC, and that Canada's Privacy Commissioner has expressed disappointment and asked Google to explain itself. (UPDATE: A class complaint has been filed in San Jose, claiming that Google broke the law by sharing personal data without users' consent.)

Earlier this week I asked people in my Twitter network how they're feeling about Buzz after the fixes they've made. Some are now reassured but others aren't. For example, Joseph Lorenzo Hall wrote:

@rmack totally lost me for good.. I just can't believe that they won't do it again. It will have to be very useful/different to get me back

Some are leaving GMail altogether. Judson Dunn reported:

@rmack my boyfriend deleted his long time gmail account for good :(

I was so concerned about exposing people in my GMail network during the first week after launch that I stayed off Buzz entirely until Monday afternoon. By then I felt that the worst privacy problems had been fixed, and I understood well enough how to tweak the settings that I could at least go in without doing harm to others. After playing with it a bit and poking around I posted some initial observations and invited the people in my network to respond. There are still plenty of issues - some people who claimed in Twitter that they had turned off Buzz are still there, and I think Buzz should make it easier for people to use pseudonyms or nicknames not tied to their email address if they prefer.  From Beijing, Jeremy Goldkorn of the influential media blog Danwei responded: "I like the way Buzz works now, and it seems to me that the privacy concerns have been addressed."

I've noticed that some Chinese Buzz users have been using it to post and discuss material that has been censored by Chinese blog-hosting platforms and social networking sites. If Buzz becomes useful as a way to preserve and spread censored information around quickly, it seems to me that's a plus as long as people aren't being exposed in ways they don't want. My friend Isaac Mao wrote:

It's more important to Chinese to make information flowing rather than privacy concern this moment. With more hibernating animals in cave, we can't tell too much on the risks about identity, but more on how to wake up them.

Buzz has unleashed some potentials on sharing which just follows my Sharism theory, people actually have much more stuff to share before they realize them.

But I agree with any conerns on privacy, including the risks that authority may trace publishers in China. It's very much possible to be targeted once they were notified how profound the new tool is.

The "Great Firewall" is already at work on Buzz, at least in Beijing. While most people seem to be able to access Buzz through GMail on Chinese Internet connections, numerous people report from Beijing that at least some Google profiles - including mine and Isaac's - are blocked, though people in Shanghai and Guangzhou say they're not blocked. Others in China report having trouble posting comments to Buzz, though it's unclear whether this is a technical issue with Buzz or a Chinese network blocking issue, or some strange combination of the two. [UPDATE 2/21: Isaac (at the bottom of this buzz thread) and others (including somebody in the comments section of this post) report that our Google profiles are now accessible. It's not clear why they weren't at least for some people before.]

It will be interesting to see how things evolve, and whether activists in various countries find Buzz to be a useful alternative to Facebook and other platforms - or not. Whatever happens, I do think that Google fully deserves the negative press it has gotten and continues to get for the thoughtless way in which Buzz was rolled out. There are  senior people at Google whose job it is to focus on free expression issues, and others who work full time on privacy issues. Either the Buzz development team completely failed to consult with these people or were allowed to ignore them. I am inclined to believe the former instead of the latter, based on my interactions with the company through the Global Network Initiative and Google's support for Global Voices. Call me biased or sympathetic if you want, but I don't think that the company made a conscious decision to ignore the risks it was creating for human rights activists or people with abusive spouses - or anybody else with privacy concerns. However, if we do give Google the benefit of the doubt, then the only logical conclusion is that in this case, something about the company's management and internal communications was so broken that the company was unable to prevent a new product from unintentionally doing evil. Nick Summers at Newsweek thinks the problem is broader:

Google is so convinced of the righteousness of its mission statement that it launches products heedlessly. Take Google Books—the company was so in thrall with its plan to make all hardbound knowledge searchable that it did not anticipate a $125 million legal challenge from publishers. With Google Wave, engineers got high on their own talk that they had invented a means of communication superior to e-mail—until Wave launched and users laughed at its baffling un-usability. Last week, with Buzz, Google seemed so bewitched by the possibilities of a Google-y take on social networking that it went live without thinking through the privacy implications.

Whatever the case may be in terms of Google's internal thinking or intentions, we have a right to be concerned. Too many of us depend on Google for too many things. They have a responsibility to netizens around the world to develop more effective mechanisms to ensure that the concerns, interests, and rights of the world's netizens are adequately incorporated into the development process.

I'd very much like to hear your ideas for how netizens' concerns around the world - particularly from at-risk and marginalized communities who have the most to lose when Google gets things wrong - might be channeled to Google's development teams and product managers. Rather than wait for Google to figure this out, are there mechanisms that we as netizens might be able to build?  Are there things we can proactively do to help companies like Google avoid doing evil? Can we help them to avoid hurting us - and also help them to maximize the amount of good they can do?

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How not to save the Internet...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to give a big speech about Internet freedom on Thursday. People are calling on her to speak loudly against Chinese censorship and stand firm for free speech on the Chinese Internet - and elsewhere like Iran. I've been invited to attend and I'm also going to be on a post-game analysis panel.  But before the fun and games begin, I might as well add my two cents to the suggestion pile.

The wrong message for Clinton to give on Thursday would be something to the effect of: "Never fear, netizens of China, America is here to free you!"  

Even worse, related variants, such as: "Never fear, netizens of internet-censoring nations, America is here to save you, galloping in on our trusty steed Google, brandishing our mighty weapon, Twitter!!"

My dream speech would be about how the Internet poses a challenge to all governments and most companies (except those companies like Google whose business is built around that challenge). I would call on all governments to work together with citizens, companies and each other to build a globally interconnected, free and open network that enhances the lives of everybody on the planet, enables commerce and innovation by big and small players alike, makes everybody richer and freer, and improves all governments' relations with their citizens by making government more transparent, efficient, and thus more credible and legitimate.

I would quote Benjamin Franklin, who wrote in 1759: “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

The speech would remind us all that all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that American democracy was built on this assumption. The Internet empowers governments and law enforcement agencies as well as citizens, upstart candidates, and dissidents.  I would emphasize that the great challenge of our generation - as far as freedom is concerned - is to rediscover the right balance in the Internet age between society's need for security on the one hand, and the imperative of human rights and free expression on the other. Authoritarian nations obviously don't have the balance right which is why we consider them repressive. No democracy ever stops arguing internally about where the balance should be. But I would be honest about the fact that right now the world's democracies are arguing fiercely within and sometimes amongst themselves about where the right balance point should be in the Internet age. Wouldn't it be just so wonderful if the United States could take the lead in being honest rather than acting like the Lone Ranger on a white horse, much to the derision and cynicism of all my friends back in Asia, including the ones who hate their own governments?

The problem of censorship and surveillance is obviously many magnitudes worse when these things happen without a democratic political system, independent courts, and a free press. But as I've written here and here, I'm concerned that in the name of protecting children, fighting terror and preserving the intellectual property and pre-Internet business models of companies with deep pockets and powerful lobbies, Western democracies are going too far in enabling censorship and surveillance, in a way that in turn empowers and justifies what the Chinese and other authoritarian governments are doing. A few years ago China used to deny censoring because it wasn't something a government wanted to admit in polite company. Now they proudly respond to questions about their Internet policies along the lines of: "We're merely exercising our sovereign right just like everybody else. F-off."

The U.S. congress is getting energized again to make it illegal for U.S. companies to cooperate with surveillance in "internet-restricting countries" (an ever-growing list which - depending on how you define "internet-restricting" which one could argue over endlessly - includes a growing number of democracies and close U.S. trade partners). Yesterday Glenn Greenwald brought up a chillingly ironic fact about corporate collaboration with surveillance in America:

all of the sponsors of the pending bill to ban American companies from collaborating with domestic Internet spying in foreign countries -- the inspirationally-named Global Online Freedom Act of 2009 -- voted in favor of the 2008 bill to legalize what had been the illegal warrantless interception of emails and to immunize telecoms which helped our own government break the law in how it spied on Americans.

I will leave it there, and cross my fingers for Thursday. Meanwhile if you want a warm-up, I'll be speaking on a panel with Evgeny Morozov, Jim Fallows, Tim Wu and Sec. Clinton's special adviser Alec Ross at the New America Foundation tomorrow morning at 9:30am Eastern. The live webcast will be here.

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