So Google China has officially taken its ball and gone home… to Hong Kong. That’s right, in what news organizations all over the world are sure to trumpet as a major victory for the Human Rights debates that continues to swirl around the People’s Republic, Google carried through on its threat to stop censoring its content for the Chinese government.
Whoop dee doo.
Now don’t get me wrong, this does make for a decent melodrama. Idealistic youth from the West falls in love with a mysterious and secretive beauty from the East. Sparks fly, emotions run hot, and things are said that cannot be unsaid. And bam, before you know it the Western youth’s naïve visions of saving his jaded lover from her sordid past are dashed, he runs off into the cold night and finds himself in bed with her sister and a monumental headache.
Or something like that.
To be honest, this whole affair is just so much ado about very little. In the end, neither Google nor China can be called the winner – but nor can either of them truly be called the loser. Both played chicken with each other, and in their own different ways, both of them hit the oncoming train.
I’ll elaborate: Google has lost a vast potential market… at least for the time being. Though its share of the Chinese internet search pie was tiny – a mere 13% - next to the Chinese juggernaut called BaiDu (which has pretty much all of the other 87%), that was 13% of something on the order of 128 million users. That’s over 16 million users lost as of today. Not even to mention the fact that there’s another ~1.15 billion people in China who have not yet started using the internet. Not that they all ever will, mind you. Merely pointing out a vast potential for expansion.
But don’t worry. In spite of the dire “warnings” from Chinese netizens (most of whom, it is safe to say, are being paid by-the-insult by the Ministry of Propaganda) calling Google, Clinton, Obama, the CIA, and anything else they can think of “evil” and “bad” and doomed to failure by pulling out of China… I don’t foresee the behemoth that is Google Inc. being taken to its knees by a loss of potential market share. Sure, there’s the real market share loss at present, but I doubt anyone in Google was overly shocked that this had happened. It was an exploratory enterprise into an emerging market, not the cornerstone of their operations.
And this was hardly the first tiff the internet company has had with the Great Red Dragon. Almost before the ink had dried on their license to operate in China in 2006, the Chinese government was taking potshots at the company. Time and again, Google was accused of promoting pornography, disharmony, and stirring up ill-feeling in the Chinese people. And this was before the Chinese government got around to hiring two-bit hack hackers to bumble their way into the company’s mainframe to look around for private email addresses. Suffice it to say, it’s been a rocky road for these two would-be lovers.
Truly, if one stops to really look at the two parties and their respective world-views, this becomes more a tale of star-crossed-ness than any Montague or Capulet could ever hope to top. Google has quite successfully taken up the mantle of Information Freedom. The freedom to search for news, opinion, politics, entertainment, clothes, porn, and pizza from the comfort of your living room and the semi-anonymity of the internet. Hell, with Google Earth and Google Maps I can tell you which half of your garden you forgot to put the sprinkler on, and that you really ought to close your curtains when you’re jumping on the bed nude. It’s a brave new world where you’re only as private and anonymous are you are aware and able to control your presence and information.
Compare this to the Glorious and Harmonious People’s Republic of China. In spite of marked reforms over the last several decades, it still remains an authoritarian, one-party state. Information remains tightly controlled, and the media organizations are all quite literally organs of the government. Moreover, this is nothing new for the Chinese people. For them in many respects, the CCP is merely the Red Dynasty, which followed the Qing Dynasty, which followed the Ming Dynasty, etc, etc. The currently stability of China is in large part due to information control. Sure, some more educated may have heard stories about bad things happening in the west of the country – faraway remote places like Tibet and Uyghur – but they’re told time and again by all official sources that there are just a few bad people out there – bad people who want to kill and blow things up. Most of the population is perfectly content, perfectly happy with being Chinese, and actually treated better than the average Han. The point being, if all news is good news for you, why question it? Most people simply trust that ultimately the government is working for the betterment of the Chinese people as a whole (a view supported by the rapid growth and changes in lifestyle for the better), and that if they’re not told about some things as a result, then it must be for the best. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? Why do foreigners always want to start arguments about the things we’d rather not think about?
China, though, has also lost out in this tiff… though it may not truly feel it for a while, if ever. The Chinese – both people and government – very much want to be seen as an important and equal member of the world community. The 1800’s and 1900’s were a long, hard, brutal period for China, most of which it was either a global laughingstock, a conquered territory, a war zone, or all three. The Chinese want – no, need – to be seen as an equal - a great country ready to finally take its place among the big dogs of the world. That’s why they went all-out for the 2008 Olympics, and why they’re going all-out for the 2010 World Expo. And this spat does that ambition no favors. Google’s maneuver places China in the very uncomfortable position of have to say very clearly: “we are going to censor information, whether you like it or not.” That doesn’t exactly make for great press. The view of China across the world has taken a dip in light of this; while Google’s image has actually been lifted because of it taking a “brave stand” against censorship, in spite of the hit it might take in profits. Personally, though, I’m one to believe that any press is good press… and a short-term dip might just turn into a long-term growth when you can manage to make yourself a moral David against a censorship Goliath in the process. On the other hand, the world needs China good-graces and production capacity more than it need to poke it in the eye over information censorship. China's not in a position to be bullied about how it handles information within its own borders. In all likelihood, this tempest in a teapot will rapidly spin itself out.
So we’ve finally found out what happens when the Unstoppable Force meets the Immovable Object: a fizzle. Because that’s what this really is. No earth-shattering change, no Berlin Wall coming down, just a temporary server in Hong Kong for a few days before that too is either blocked out entirely, or just slowed and censored all to hell. The only ones truly affected are the employees of Google China, and those 13% of Chinese-language internet search users. For the employees, another job surely awaits. For the Chinese searchers, Baidu beckons. And for the rest of us, English Google still runs fine… and even if that stops working, I turn on my proxy just like every time I want to check Facebook. And the world goes right on spinning…
(CS) TAW Out.
The lycanthropic jottings of my fourth year prowling the Chinese moonlight.
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