thanks for the clarification and response – hope you’re having a great Chinese New Year.

by the way… last week i went to my first chinese language class here in wellington! im doing things a bit backwards, but nonetheless excited.

~V

Basically, I think you’re confusing my arguments, and this may be the fault of me, the writer. My argument in the Google’s Lies post was that China is getting tighter and tighter (NOT more liberal, or free) about their control on information in-country.

The first line of Google’s Company Overview reads “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” I understand that Google is a for-profit company, but when a company breaks its core value to open in a new market, it becomes a question of corporate integrity and responsibility.

You can’t argue that people have a choice – because they’re not being given a choice. I don’t know if you had much chance to ask people here, but I know for a fact that most people have no idea that there is a whole other system of information out there. Many people don’t know that what they’re reading has been moulded to make them think a certain way – why would they ever suspect that their newspapers aren’t telling the truth. And now, why would the assume that their search engine wouldn’t give them the same access to information as we have in the rest of the world?

My point in the post about companies moving their labour to developing nations was not meant to be so much on the morality of this type of labour in other countries. And by all means, I hope those with any humanity protest unfair labour practices, using someone’s poverty as a justification for exploitation is sad and how can we ever expect a company (as an entity) to choose the moral road – a company is not a person, it is a faceless machine with one goal – to make money. We have to make that choice and make it a matter of $$. AND we have to pressure countries to start caring about their peoples, as they are the ones that allow the abuses to happen.

But I digress, what I am trying to say is that where the use of cheap labour in developing countries is largely mobilizing (right or wrong, it allows people to feed themselves), Google’s decision to edit information seen by Chinese users demobilizes people.

Now, I realize this is not true in all cases, but sticking with China as an example. People in China have a choice to work in a factory assembling guitars for Canadian-based musical instrument distributors, but if they then go home and pick up a newspaper (the only newspapers they have access to being the state-governed content ones) and read a rather twisted version of reality – with no check system available to understand that it’s not “really” how the world looks… that’s not right. And if Google supports that… then Google too isn’t right. Reiterating what I said… it’s not knowing what you aren’t allowed to have that is the most damaging, it’s not knowing that you’re even being denied something.

One final thing… if you’re going to name drop… at least attribute… c’mon.. I had to Google Paul Krugman, not all of us are up-and-up on famous American Economists – incidently, China didn’t block it.

Just catching up a bit on your blog entries and I’m a bit confused about something…

In your entry about Canadian job loss, you seem to put forth the argument that foreign companies employing the likes of underdeveloped nations is in fact a win-win situation – the company saves money (as it would obviously have to pay higher wages within Canada) and the employees gain income in an otherwise impoverished nation. I tend to agree with you – in fact, Paul Krugman asserts that even those employed through Child Labor, are often the primary income earners in families of the underdeveloped world.

Things become confusing for me, however, when in your next entry you talk about Google’s recent compliance with the Chinese Government (censoring searches, etc.). You write:

“but in the end… will anything change? Will we all stop using the three major search engines to protest this? Nope… we’ll let Corporate America dirty its hands with Communist China and gladly place out of mind the fact that there is a whole generation of Chinese netizens that are not allowed to access the Web sites of their choice, but even worse, they have no idea that those sites exist.”

My question for you is, how is this any different than backing the foreign companies investing in the underdeveloped world’s labor? If you suggest that we boycott Google and Yahoo’s services, simply because they aren’t bringing all available information to the people, than maybe you should also suggest boycotting the sneaker industry, which employees women of the underdeveloped nations often times in near slave labor conditions. The bottom line is that in both instances (whether it be Google, or the Canadian companies that are taking their industries offshores) the company is doing what is best for the company. Companies are about making profits. While I am not always Capitalism’s most staunch supporter, I do feel that I have a realistic grasp on its advantages and its pitfalls.

I do not think Google has a moral responsibility to educate the people of China. It is an internet service which people can choose to use or not to use – the same as they can choose whether or not to utilize the Chinese propoganda spread throughout Chinese newspapers. That said, you might want to look at this in a positive light, as most scholars of Economic and Social development contend that things like Democratization are better able to take hold in a country that is economically stable with open and competitive markets (i.e. China seems to have adapted the capitalist approach to many facets of life, and is hopefully evolving, albeit slowly, towards a more democratic path). The main benefit of Democratization being that it would, at least theoretically, give people more freedom in all aspects of life – not just through their chosen internet search engine.

I just don’t feel that you can embrace some forms of a globalized for-profit company, and then attack others. It seems hypocritical….

~Vanessa