2006 18
Google and China: Let the Chinese vote and decide!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in New Ideas with No Comments
Google is an investor in my company, Fon, but I don´t work for Google nor have I spoken with anyone at Google about what I am going to say (am I getting good at American style disclosures or what?). Anyway, here it goes. I think Google should ask the Chinese to vote. It would be a simple vote. Would you Chinese citizen like us, Google, to stay in China while accepting censorship or leave? And see what happens. In this way Google would start a democratic process and let the Chinese people decide who are the ones at stake here.
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Philipp Lenssen on February 18, 2006 ·
Many Chinese are exposed to daily propaganda, though — before allowing the country to make a reasonable democratic choice, shouldn’t it first *deliver them all the information* they need to make this choice?
On a side-note, sometimes the population at whole is better off if some minorities are suffering. Does this make this make it morally OK on some grander (mathematical) scale? I don’t think so. I want a vote in which the two guys Yahoo turned over, who are now suffering year-long prison terms, to have a major say in this. I really want to hear their opinion on the Google move.
On another side-note, my Chinese friend living in Germany has stopped using Google as soon as it was clear they are cooperating with the Chinese gov’t.
Marcelo Levit on February 19, 2006 ·
They put a man in space, they are powerful.
And you know, money talks.
sarahello on February 19, 2006 ·
They block google so we block those dollar store items with chinese writing on them. lets call it mu google gai pan
Sameer Nadkarni on February 19, 2006 ·
The real “bad guys” here are lawmakers on Capitol Hill. For decades US companies have abided by China’s rules in order to operate in China, often with US technology stolen or compromised. But US lawmakers never used MFN, WTO and other issues strongly enough to get the desired behavior from China. Suddenly NOW the lawmakers are hot and bothered about companies (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) abiding by China’s rules. And rather than taking this as yet another opportunity to set the proper context of US-China relations, they are bad-mouthing the companies. As usual, the Capitol Hill crowd is living up to their reputation for stupidity. And once again, the media is not asking the questions it should.
pj on February 20, 2006 ·
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
(Declaration of Human Rights)
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html
lluisr on February 20, 2006 ·
Human rights before money. I have the theory that the human rights attracts money. When the community is more large the money that receives is greater. For this reason I am sure that in the next years Chine will open his communication laws to lead the business market completely.
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Declan on February 18, 2006 ·
If your suggesting a vote on whether Google should stay in China or go, it sounds like a one horse race that falls somewhat short of being a ‘democratic process’ to use your own words. Where I come from it takes a plurality of horses before you can call it a race.
What about introducing some choice here guys. Here at the Dumbfind’s Chinese search engine domain (www.dumbfind.cn) we’re in China already without political censorship.
So that’s 2 horses for starters. Let’s hear from any other Search Engines out there who are up for it. Let the voting begin…