Lean Left

This is a very, very odd argument. In essence, the author argues that Google can do no good by leaving China over its censorship practices.  More, they argue that Google doesn’t have the right to attempt to alter China’s behavior in any way:

The thing is, Google sacrificed any moral stance they could possibly adopt, when they entered China and set up business in 2005. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in favor of censorship and just can’t imagine living with such heavy restrictions. But how are you going to enter a country, comply with their censorship, then turn around and complain about it five years later? I wish there was an easy way for both sides. Yet barracking Google on isn’t the way to go about it. It’s not for us, for Google, or for anyone to really tell China how to manage itself, how to govern its people and tell them they should be able to access all the information they want. I mean, we can tell China to quit its censorship practices, and we can do it online, because it’s our right to do so in whatever country we live in, but how much use is it going to be, really?

Google knew what they were getting into when they made agreements with the Chinese government, they knew they couldn’t take the country’s censorship lightly, and just like how you and I respect countries’ customs when we visit—by handing a Korean a business card with two hands, or standing on the right-side of the escalators in England—they knew they couldn’t just waltz in and try and change the situation. True, when governments can see ill-goings in other countries they try and intervene, wars break out this way, but was it up to Google to break the Chinese people from their firewall manacles?

Thats right: the author argues that government censorship is just like standing on the right side of the elevator in England.  This almost reads like parody, but as far as I can tell it is serious.  I am almost at a loss for words.

Almost.

The author is correct in a very narrow sense.  Google leaving now would cause some economic hardship to some people in China and when you participate in a country’s economy, you will end up playing by their rules.  But pretty much everything else in the post is, at best, arguable and at worse complete bollocks.

First, keep in mind that companies lay off people, end alliances, and generally much about with the economic circumstances of people all over the world and they generally do so for something as inconsequential as a temporary eighth of a point jump in their stock price.  That is just how business functions.  Calling out Google for doing the same in the pursuit of an actually worthwhile goal is puzzling, to be kind.  Perhaps you can argue that becasue Google has an explicitly moral reason for leaving China that it should be held to a different standard in this case.  But then you would have to prove that the harm it does by leaving outweighs the harm it does by staying.  The author doesn;t come close to making that point.  They honestly don’t even try.

The author admits that Google leaving China would be a blow against Chinese censorship, calling it a “a great step forward in tackling censorship”.  The author even explicitly states that censorship is wrong, saying that ” …[I] just can’t imagine living with such heavy restrictions.”  But at no point does the author try to argue that the economic harm is greater than the good Google could do by threatening the Chinese censorship regime.  Instead, the author just argues that Google has already sold its soul by first going into China and agreeing to be part of the censorship regime.  The argument is basically that sine Google once agreed to go along with Chinese censorship, they are obligated to never change their minds.  Oh, there is some hand waving in the direction of the damage Google’s partners and employees might experience, but no real attempt to weigh that harm with the harm Google does and would continue to do by participating in the Chinese censorship regime.  e the author isn’t going to take that argument seriously, then I don’t feel I need to either.  No, the only real argument that the author makes is that Google doesn’t have the right to try and influence the Chinese government and that Google is not allowed to change its strategy based on a changed understanding of the situation.

That is insane.  Part of the justification for Google doing business with a regime like China is that capitalism will eventually open up the country politically.  Google has obviously come to the opposite conclusion, and is acting on their revelation.  To this author, that is a terrible decision, largely because Google doesn’t have the right to attempt to influence the Chinese government and because it once had a different opinion.  That is an almost childishly nihilistic argument: life sucks, but you don’t have the right to ever try to make things better.  Just sit back and don’t do anything to ever challenge the status quo or set your sights higher than the next quarterly earnings statement.  It is a defeatist, nihilistic, almost cowardly argument made all the worse because it pretends to concern itself with the well being of Chinese without actually bothering to address that alleged concern in an honest, forthright manner.  Pretty much the only reason not to think this article is a plant from the Chinese government is because it is not believable that the Chinese government would make such a laughably unpersuasive attempt.