Everybody’s been out-Heroding Herod lately on this whole Microsoft in China issue. If you’ve missed it, Microsoft won’t allow Chinese users to include the words ‘freedom’ or ‘democracy’ in titles or URLs of blogs hosted on MSN. Robert seems to have started things, and the debate has raged since.
Shelley has a good wrap-up of the issue, and makes a very salient point in her comments:
Yet Microsoft’s actions cause less harm than buying an iPod from Apple, when one doesn’t know exactly what are the circumstances under which it is built.
We have a lot of ties to the existing state of affairs with China. Wal-Mart wouldn’t exist without the state of affairs in China. If we feel right to condemn one such tie, while still maintaining the others, doesn’t this make our self-rightousness a little suspect?
Amen. Before fretting about a few banned terms, let’s take a look at China’s appalling human rights record. To pick a few highlights (from a long and diverse list):
- “An average of 15,000 people per year were executed, judicially or extra judicially, by the government between 1997 and 2001.”
- Religious freedom doesn’t exist. For example, “members of the Roman Catholic Church in China are heavily persecuted, as are members of any other church not among those recognised by the state.” Not to mention ongoing abuse of Falun Gong practitoners.
- Tibet.
Bloggers, pundits, journalists et al–quit tilting at windmills and talk about the real issues. Those who have suffered under Chinese rule probably don’t care about not being able to use the word ‘freedom’ in their frickin’ blog. It disgusts me that the IOC gave this country the Olympics.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Exactly: there are real issues and the banning of a word here or there is not one of them.
As for the IOC … you expected something else!?!?!
If they don’t care, then why block it at all? There’s a pretty strong reform sentiment in China that values the fight for freedom of expression as much as it values not being held down in more overt and brutal ways. It was that very sentiment that took so many Chinese into Tianamen Square, and the fear of its growth that prompted the massacre there. So yes there are issues more daunting than what words can be used, but just because it doesn’t matter to us (you don’t know what you have until you lose it) it doesn’t mean it doesn’t (rightly) matter to them.
Todd: Point taken. I’m concerned with (and sure of) with our response as much as anything, and how we seem to have focused on this issue exclusive of the sundry others.
Actually, I was happy that China got the Olympics. With all eyes on China, people are going to be watching them, and it’ll be harder for them to sweep things under the rug.
(Plus they’ll have to do something about the Beijing airport, but that’s a personal gripe.)
Also, people are starting to target China as “the country to watch”, for lack of a better way to put it. Countless articles have been written about China recently. This topic was also covered in the book “China Inc”, which I plan to read. I think all the international attention is good, and may help the cause of human rights activists.
The comments I’ve seen have vilified Microsoft for being capitalist and ignoring “ethics”. They don’t seem to be understanding the real-world picture. The only way to truly generate discourse within a restrictive state is to work within the restrictions to show the “powers that be” that discussion can be productive. Better to give some tools to the Chinese people for self-expression, and let them push the boundaries themselves, than go head to head with the Chinese government.
Microsoft is a company to make money. What I don’t understand is that vast majority of Chinese seems to be happy living without personal freedom. Most of them have the potential to be killer machines, being without personal openion, that could well be used by the people in power. China is a danger to this planet.
While we’re on the subject … read this over on metaFilter last night.
Smoking in China
This sort of anti-China rhetoric is tired. It is certainly true that China has a poor human rights record and leads the world in executions (although the 15,000 per year figure is unattributed and contradicts Amnesty International’s own figures), but the wooly notion that boycotting Chinese industry is a good idea is appalling.
China has brought 400 million people out of poverty in the 20th century because people purchase Chinese products. We should do everything we can to promote freedom and democracy in China, but this does not do it.
Incidentally, there was an interesting Economist article on June 3, “China 15 years after Tiananmen: Fifteen years after the Tiananmen massacre organised dissent is non-existent.” (I don’t know if it is subscriber only, http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=2733855). It argues that increased social and economic freedom, coupled with the uncertain results of many post-Soviet transitions to democracy, has blunted the appetite of most Chinese for organized dissent.
Joke: I’m confused about what you’re instructing me to do here. Should I just not discuss China’s human rights abuses?
And why doesn’t promoting China’s evils foster freedom? Highlighting issues and educating the public certainly had an impact on, say, apartheid in South Africa.
Can you provide a source for you 400 million stat?
i hope the the ioc gave them the games with an eye toward what happened in south korea after it hosted the ’88 games. basically, the koreans got their first taste of “international” life and decided to get rid of their bad leaders and join the rest of the free world, so the theory goes.
if the ioc had that in mind and that’s really what happened in korea, giving china the games was a good idea.
there is another theory about how south korea became more democratic that relates to china. during the 80s, a middle class was created because of a general economic boom. it was this group of people, university-educated and slightly more world-wise, who spearheaded the political reforms.
so, doing business with china helps the chinese economy and hopefully creates a middle class. that new middle class, not us, makes china better.
alexis: The Chinese will sweep everything under the rug, just in time for the Games. An example: all the migrant workers currently living illegally in Beijing, though they are necessary for doing what Beijingers would rather not do, such as take away the trash, will have their residence documents checked for once. It’ll also be a “Good News” Olympics, as far as the IOC and the Chinese government are concerned. I was optimistic a couple years ago that it would shine a big spotlight on the country and its record, but then I realized that spotlights are only designed to show part of the stage.
Joke: Dissent is actually widespread: there are daily protests against working conditions in mines and elsewhere. Working conditions are poor partly because for many of the workers, it’s a marked improvement over getting nothing while working in the countryside. There’s no such thing as a real union (see below), and those that complain are fired, because a replacement is pretty easy to find these days. The 400 million people who are not poor sounds about right from what I’ve read. That leaves another billion who can barely afford to buy a television on their yearly salary. Also: that 400 million are almost totally oblivious to the poverty of others, because of the urban-rural split, and the strict regulations regarding moving to a different location in the country.
Darren: I’m no fan of religious movements, much less so of Falun Gong. I actually believe the Chinese government when they say it’s a cult, but that’s the *excuse* they use for the persecution, not the reason. The *reason* such relgious movements are persecuted–and yes, they’re persecuted, unjustly–has less to do with the relgious part than it does with the fact that they are organizations outside of Communist Party control.
jd: you make the best point about the Olympics, rightly comparing China to another former authoritarian country. I’ll allow for the possibility that having the Olympics in China will make some in the government opening up to the international community, but the Chinese have long memories, and still hold a grudge towards the west for the Opium Wars, among other embarrasments at the hands of the West. More likely, though, the young, rich Chinese of today will have more influence in the next 20 years because of a) their western educations (a degree from Columbia is more prestigious now than one from Beijing University), and b) the one-child policy. It pains me to cite her, but Jan Wong has a point when she says that those growing up with all the attention focussed on them because they are the only child of the family are almost like Americans. They grew up with what they believe is an entitlement, and when they hit their twenties–that will coincide with the Olympics somewhat, which will get all the press–and find that things are different than what they’re used to, they’re going to be pretty upset about that.
Darren: I think I was perfectly clear. I was suggesting that the notion that buying iPods is contributing to Chinese tyranny is wooly thinking, particularly given all the other good China’s openness to trade has done. I wasn’t saying that complaining about China’s human rights abuses is wrong: we should complain, and loudly. The 400m figure is from the World Bank, via the Economist article “Poverty and the ballot box: Why are poor democracies not better at ending poverty?”, May 12 (http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3961369).
Richard: I think the point is that political dissent, of the kind seen in Tiananmen (on a smaller scale) is rare. Other kinds of dissent still exist. The 400 million figure (note that it is the change in the number of people living in poverty, not the total number of people not living in poverty) is certainly fractionally better than, say India, or almost all of Africa.
I don’t have an iPod so there. As for the Olympics, Hitler designed the symbol with the rings. Besides censorship is far more preventable than forced labor camps. It’s precisely because we don’t do the easy stuff that the hard stuff never gets done.
China is dangerous. It’s long term goals are not peacefull at all. Democracy and freedom to all people should be created in China to counter their long term aggression and aspirations to dominate Asia.