Everyone knows right China is ripe for business, particularly the e-business. The population of China has number of well over 1 billion people for some years now and they are growing by leaps and bounds. They are literally a neo-industrial revolution.
In history, industrialization involved building and expansion. It involved raising the standard of living for most of the population because they begin to acquire resources for themselves and the ability to purchase products. Technology advances in a variety of disciplines. Academia thrives and so does communication. Communication is really what everything what everything’s about and the Internet is all about communication.
Microsoft recently entered into an agreement with the government of China to bring in some of their search engine optimization offerings onto the Chinese Internet. When Microsoft when into China with MSN Spaces, they agreed to play by Chinese rules. As a result, Microsoft has censored a number of words like democracy and independence, references to such things with Taiwan and even mentioned Mao Tse Tung is out bounds.
Microsoft has caught a fair amount of flack as bloggers lit into them over their decision to abide by China’s rules. I will agree with them on this. I’m not a big fan of censorship. I find it repugnant but the reality is censorship goes on in the U.S. everyday. The government may not always do it, many times corporations do. A good example is Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The book is about the horrors of censorship. He was horrified to find out that the publisher had “edited out” pages with various printings over the years in order to make it a little easier to stomach for some folks.
China had 94 million Internet users at the end of 2004. Someone is going to get them. Other services like Yahoo and Amazon already do censoring of topics and titles. Most U.S. companies doing business in communication in China have agreed to these demands by the government. It’s the cost of doing business in a country that is still, by most accounts a closed environment with very controlled interaction with the outside world.
Here’s The Clincher
China is finally opening up to the rest of the world. This process has been slow and going on for decades. The free market economy that’s been developing over there many would argue goes fundamentally against the Marxist thought process. Karl Marx is one of the philosophers who helped develop communism. Microsoft is merely trying to become involved in the burgeoning economy.
The other point is this: change doesn’t happen overnight. Therefore, changes in the rules and what can be said or written won’t happen overnight either. Microsoft and Yahoo and others realize this. But they will happen. As the Chinese culture becomes more open and people begin to communication more, then ideas spread and if enough of these idea spread, maybe another word or two will be allowed and then a couple of more and a couple of more. Before you know it, freedom of speech exists, they have a relatively open society and we can all blog together in peace and freedom loving, democracy living, independence needing people.
John Stith is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
