Yahoo China: Where Does its Loyalty Lie?
By Caitlin O’Connell
With their businesses growing in China, the world’s top web providers Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft have entered into a questionable alliance with the Chinese government. At first companies like Yahoo China only cooperated with the Chinese government’s efforts to censor its population, but the situation became much more serious as Yahoo China began to betray their users and completely give in to governmental “pressure.” The question is, is this internet giant being forced to bow to immense government pressure, or is it going along with the government’s attempts to limit freedom of information in order to increase its business prospects?
There are two forms of censorship that are currently employed by the Yahoo and Google China search engines. Firstly, whole websites are blocked all together; websites that discuss sensitive political or religious issues are de-listed and consequently become unavailable to users. If a Chinese resident was to try and search for international news articles from websites such as BBC News or The New York Times about antigovernment demonstrations (the most well-known example is Tiananmen Square), the search will yield no results. The second type of censorship involves the actual words entered into the search; terms such as “democracy” and “Falun Gong,” an anti-government group, will not turn up with corresponding sites.
While censorship is a real problem, internet users have found ways to work around these barriers, including the use of proxy servers located outside the country that provide access to the internet outside of China. But who compiled this list of forbidden words? Who decided that a search involving the term “human rights” could be a threat to the Chinese government? While Yahoo contends that they were under the impression that all internet companies working in China were given a list of words that were to be prohibited on search engines, Human Rights Watch Director for China, Brad Adams, thinks otherwise. Adams argues that it was not the Chinese government that demanded that these said words be blocked, but rather Yahoo China itself. Acting like a government stooge, Yahoo devised a list of terms believed to turn up anti-government results and implemented them into the firewall. Human Rights Watch has requested a copy of the alleged “list” of prohibited words on several occasions, and Yahoo has failed to present it.
Yahoo China crossed a line with this infringement on the rights of the Chinese people to access information on the internet: In 2003, the Chinese police requested from the company the names of two anonymous bloggers whose e-mail accounts and personal blogs were being monitored. Yahoo complied with the police, and the bloggers were arrested. According to Amnesty International, over 57 Chinese have been arrested for discussing democracy in public online forums. Should an internet company hand over the names of customers to whom it has sworn to safeguard and protect their anonymity? The Yahoo China decision to expose the anonymous bloggers reflects the underlying motive of these major internet companies: to appease the government in order to continue promoting their business in the country.
Given its large population, China is viewed as a lucrative market. Companies such as Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft will continue to push ethical boundaries in order to keep from losing out on the opportunity to increase their business in that country. Looking over the mission statements of Yahoo and Google, it is clear that if these companies are to continue conducting business in China while attempting to appease the Chinese government, these statements will have to be reevaluated. Yahoo claims that it values its customers “above all else,” and that it shares “a responsibility to maintain” the loyalty and trust of its customers. Turning over the names of the anonymous bloggers is a direct contradiction of these words. Yahoo China must decide where its loyalty lies; is it with the customers, or with the money? Hopefully, Yahoo will choose to remain true to its mission before more harm comes to any anonymous bloggers who dare to share their voices.
