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Google vs China: capitalist model, virtual wallThe breach between a corporate behemoth of the new-media age and an emerging state superpower defines the struggle for the world’s information future, writes Johnny Ryan and Stefan Halper in an article for openDemocracy.
A speech on the theme of Internet freedom around the world, delivered by Hillary Clinton on 21 January 2010, contained a striking phrase. The United States Secretary of State, speaking at Washington’s journalism-focused Newseum, argued that nation-states that chose to limit free access to information risked “walling themselves off from the progress of the next century”.
The timing of Clinton’s speech may have been fortuitous; it had been scheduled before the events of January 2010 involving corporate giant Google and China. But its core target is as unmistakable as its message: “We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas” – is crystal.
Her comments came amid the turbulent fallout of Google’s decision – announced on 12 January – to take a “new approach” toward China: “We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks, we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all.
"We recognise that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China,” the statement read.
This statement is momentous, in two respects. First, it positions Google as a champion of principled capitalism, vested with what may be called the “nerd norms” of the engineers who built the Internet.
Second, it highlights the division between this new form of principled capitalism and the novel form of authoritarian capitalism that China represents.
The ostensible reason for Google’s change of posture was a battery of hacking attacks on Google’s infrastructure to steal information from it and from human-rights activists using its gmail service, part of a wider cyber-assault on the infrastructure of more than 30 other companies.
Beyond this specific incident, however, something deeper and more profound is under way: the emergence of a clash of two new and distinct models of capitalism.
The sixth of Google’s 10 corporate principles is: “You can make money without doing evil”. It is difficult to fully understand just how enormous a sacrifice Google may be making to uphold this principle as it faces down the Chinese government.
Only time will tell; and if the analysts who have doubted the sincerity of Google’s motives, are correct.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences reports that in 2008-09 alone, 90 million additional Chinese connected to the Internet; by June 2009, there were 253 million Chinese Internet users, exceeding the number in the US. Since this figure represents only 22.5% of the Chinese population, the potential for further growth is immense.
China is now, and will remain for the foreseeable future, home to the largest population of Internet users on the planet; the country will (as the International Telecommunication Union and World Bank research suggests) become a huge market for many kinds of Internet business in 2010-20.
For Google’s shareholders, the prospect of a withdrawal from a potential market of 1.3 billion users may seem too great a cost to pay to uphold the company’s principles. But Google’s action can be viewed as that of a principled capitalist, a champion of what may be called “nerd norms”.
A new normal
There is a double twist in the clash between Google and the Chinese government: each represents a model of capitalism at variance with the other, yet each also is the product of a culture at odds with capitalism as the latter originally developed and has been understood.
The brand of capitalism adopted by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is grounded in authoritarian communism; Google’s is grounded in the (at the time) oddball values of engineers and programmers.
These pioneers of the Internet were driven by an engineer’s interest in technology far more than by profit.
In order to enter the Chinese market in January 2006, Google had courted widespread controversy by adhering to the Chinese government’s legal requirement to censor its search results. The company justified breaching its own core principles “in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results”.
But Google’s embarrassment then, and its decision to break with the Chinese government, now alike reflect its commitment to corporate principles that are more than simply window-dressing. For these are grounded in the foundations from which both the Internet and Google itself sprang.
If Google is representative of a broader trend, then the implication is that the information technology sector may be moving beyond an amoral, bottom-line form of capitalism toward something more principled.
A contest of models
The Google-China dispute can be understood in this light as the clash of two dynamic cultures: a democratising Internet that is inherently disposed to inclusion and a market-authoritarian model (exemplified by China) that seeks to ensure tacit acceptance of the state’s management of information.
The confrontation is made even sharper and more political by China’s global aspirations; Google’s large user base in the PRC; the US background of the company at a time of sensitivity between the established and the rising superpower; and the existence of a larger and growing online community aware of evolving global norms.
The Chinese leadership must tread warily in this situation, both abroad and at home. It may view international norms as a creation of the West, but policies that violate these – from its treatment of Tibetans or Uyghurs who seek greater freedom, to its censorship systems – expose it to wounding global criticism; and it must also now cope with the resentment of many Chinese Internet users at the loss of a service that has enhanced their lives and contributed to their new identity as members of a progressive online community.
The China-Google clash reveals an increasingly important global division that will become ever clearer from 2010 onward: between those who google and those who do not.
Citizens in those parts of the globe that adhere to a form of authoritarian capitalism will view information through the prism of Baidu or equivalent services willing to accept state monitoring and control.
There is a possibility in this situation that the free Google of the rest of the world may evolve to become what American blue jeans and rock 'n roll were to many young people in the communist bloc during the Cold War: an icon of liberty.
If, as Clinton implies, there is a 21st-century, virtual equivalent of the Berlin Wall of which the spiritual heart is Beijing – then the future, after all, may lie on the Google side.
To see the full report click here.
This article was first published by openDemocracy at www.opendemocracy.net
