RConversation

Hiatus and announcement

A lot is going on but unfortunately I've been too swamped with writing deadlines and other projects to do more than post short tweets on my Twitter feed.

I will be completely offline through Labor Day. My blogging hiatus may continue through September or possibly even October. 

While I'm at it, I realize that I never made an announcement here, so I might as well do it now: This summer I moved to Washington, DC, where I will be a Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation beginning in September. 

Google computer reports China blockage, all humans report otherwise

As of this writing, numerous major American and European news outlets are reporting that Google is blocked in China, based on the information appearing on Google's Mainland China service availability page.

However no journalist has actually confirmed with a human being at Google that this information is correct. What's more, I've heard from several dozen people all over China who say that Google isn't blocked for them when they access it on their Internet connections from Beijing to Shanghai to Sichuan to Hunan.

I have yet to hear from a single person who can't access Google search in Mainland China. I am collecting people's responses via Twitter here. Also see the #googlecn tag. For a sampling see here, here, here, here, and here.

The most insane part of this whole non-story is that Google's stock fell 1.4 percent and Baidu's stock rose 3.5 percent. What's even funnier are all the financial analysts who commented to Reuters about the block...funny that is if you don't own Google stock...

Kudos to TNW and TechCrunch.

UPDATE: Mike Swift of the San Jose Mercury News has just posted this update on Twitter: "Google to Mercury News: Service Ok in China, and "it's possible that our machines could overestimate" a "small" block of last night."

UPDATE2: One person who e-mailed me from Beijing, who said it was OK to quote his e-mail but did not want to be named, just sent me the following:

"I can get google.co.uk, which I use regularly now, and the .com site seems to direct me to .com/hk. Search seems ok. Ive had times in recent few weeks when it didn’t work, and then did, but this morning seems pretty OK for me. however, my colleague sitting next to me, however, has had the google.com site do down a few times after searching for non-sensitive terms, and then seems ok a few minutes later.

UPDATE3: RWW has posted the following statement from Google:

"Because of the way we measure accessibility in China, it's possible that our machines could overestimate the level of blockage. That seems to be what happened last night when there was a relatively small blockage. It appears now that users in China are accessing our properties normally.

"Please also note that the dashboard is not a real time tool."

On Google's license renewal and principled engagement

After a week of mixed signals and speculation (see previous blog post), the Chinese government has decided to renew Google's web license.

While a number of commentators are interpreting this as a "climbdown" or "wimp out" by Google, I don't understand how they have reached that conclusion. As I pointed out last week, the only thing that has changed since March is that after typing "google.cn" into the browser's address bar and hitting "return," users have to make one extra click before reaching the uncensored google.com.hk. While the google.cn page now includes links to music, translation, and shopping services, the search box you see there on the page is just a static image that takes you immediately to google.com.hk as soon as you click on it. If you have grade school literacy in Chinese it's extremely obvious from looking at that page that if you want to search anything other than music or shopping you can simply click through to google.com.hk. I don't see how adding the extra click prevents users of Google's general search from using the service any more than the direct redirection from google.cn to google.com.hk which Google implemented in March. Of course, if you are searching from inside China and don't know that you can add an "s" to the "http:" in the address box and avail yourself of the "https" encrypted function that make your searches invisible to the Chinese network operators, searches on politically sensitive terms will get blocked by the Great Firewall. But that has been true since the redirection began. It hasn't changed. So Google's change implemented last week has no substantive impact on what Chinese Internet users can or cannot access via google.cn.

The change has, however, brought them into technical compliance with the regulations. And the authorities - for whatever reason - have decided that this change is sufficient despite the fact that in spirit Google is no closer to compliance with their wishes than it was in late March.

Since Chinese regulators don't confide in me personally I can only speculate on their motivations. It seems that the pragmatists have prevailed over the ideologues in this case. If Google's web license were to be denied, Google would be shut out of China completely. That sends a very negative message to the international business community, which is already concerned about China's politicized business environment. Questions would be raised about barriers to trade. The problem could be taken to the governmental level at a time when the last thing the U.S. and China need is more cause for tension. Now that Google.cn is in technical legal compliance and the uncensored search engine has been taken offshore out of mainland Chinese jurisdiction to Hong Kong where it is perfectly legal, it's better for Chinese regulators to declare victory and allow Google to pursue business activities in China that do not run afoul of Chinese regulations: R&D, advertising sales, mobile operating platforms, etc.

Another reason why it's in China's interest to let Google engage in China despite its resistance to censorship has to do with China's long term strategy for economic competitiveness and innovation. As the recent government white paper on the Internet made clear, Internet and mobile services are a core component of China's strategy for success as a global economic powerhouse. Keeping out foreign competition might be good for Chinese companies in the short term, but not in the long term. If Chinese companies are going to compete with the world's most innovative companies, they're not going to succeed if they're sheltered from competition in their home market because the domestic business environment is excessively political. I know that many influential CEO's of China's most successful Internet and telecoms companies certainly believe that an over-insulated market is not good for their businesses in the long run.  It is my impression that this point has been getting made, quietly, to people in the government over the past few months. This point of view has even managed to surface into the public domain here and there on the Internet. One of the most compelling examples were remarks made by Edward Tian, "the father of Chinese broadband" at an IT industry forum held in Shenzhen in late March soon after Google began redirecting google.cn to google.com.hk. Tian said (translated by Luke Habberstad at China Digital Times):

You ask: who is the winner? Is Li Yanhong (co-founder of Baidu) the winner? This is hard to say. After Google left, many angry youth in our country said this was good. However, Google is also China’s best tool for understanding the West. In order to make the West understand the achievements of China’s reform and opening, many have to search through Google. Baidu maybe needs 10 or 20 more years before it can be acceptable to the Internet users of the West. It is possible that our reform and opening has lost a great tool for external publicity. We have to consider a question from two sides.

The second problem. Google is not just for searching. Google represents the future of information technology, since the Google search engine and Google cloud computing [support IT technology] behind the scenes. When we make this sort of company such a big rival, are we not also rejecting these technologies? Let us consider the accomplishments we have now achieved with a modernized core attitude. They came precisely from having an open mind. We brought over the Western invention of mobile communication and the Western invention of photo-communication, and took the title of being the nation with the largest telecommunications company in the world (China Mobile), thus achieving a leap in development. In the future, software technology might emerge in a form that uses Google services. Can we simply follow one sentence from Comrade Lenin and then throw the baby out with the bath water? We need to consider these questions.

Perhaps the people who approved Google's license found such arguments convincing, and in this case chose the long-term economic interests of the Chinese people over victory in one small skirmish.

On Google's part, they retain a foothold in the Chinese market while remaining true to their January pledge that they would no longer censor their Chinese search engine. And yes, I ran some tests today with politically sensitive Chinese-language terms on Google.com.hk. The results were not identical to Google.com because all the local Google search engines favor local content more heavily (thus results are not the same on Google.fr, Google.de, or Google.jp vs Google.com either). But I found no evidence of political censorship. For example: in a search for the Chinese language words for "Tiananmen square massacre" Google.com.hk returns all kinds of material containing details of June 4th 1989 carnage including graphic videos at the top of the video search.

Some commentators are slamming Google for capitulating because the company wants to remain engaged in China at all. Frankly I don't think that the cause of freedom and openness in China would be well served if all Western Internet companies pulled out of China completely. I don't believe its a simple matter of all-in or all-out, engage or disengage, with nothing in between. What's important is how you engage. Are your business practices, products and services helping to move things in a more open direction? Or are you collaborating with the surveillance and jailing of dissidents and providing cover and legitimacy to the world's most sophisticated censorship system? I believe it can be possible to engage in China while upholding core principles on free expression and privacy. To say that it isn't easy is a massive understatement. I'm not saying Google has always done everything right or that they won't make mistakes in the future - in China or elsewhere. But I am hopeful that they will continue find it in their global, long-term business interest to try to do the right thing, correct their mistakes and acknowledge wrongdoing when that happens, and continue to work with activists and socially responsible investors to prove that principled engagement is not only possible, but necessary.

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Google.cn added ICP license number on Monday

Beijing News is reporting (in Chinese) that one of their reporters noticed on Monday that the Google.cn landing page has added an ICP license number dated 2010. The license number had not been there before. The reporter then confirmed with Wang Jinhong, director of public relations for Google China, that the license number had been newly added. Three other links to "Music," "Translate," and "Shopping" were also added. The report did not clarify whether the addition of the ICP license means that the Chinese authorities have renewed Google.cn's ICP license after Google announced on June 28th that it has changed the way in which users are re-directed from Google.cn to Google.com.hk.

The article reports that Google's current ICP license, issued in June 2007, is valid for five years but requires annual review. It was issued to the joint venture company jointly owned by Google and the Beijing Gu Xiang Information Technology Co. Ltd. 

I've put in a query to people I know at Google but today is a national holiday in the United States. It's possible we may see some clarification on the Official Google Blog on Tuesday morning California time, or maybe journalists' queries will get answered in the coming hours and the reports will start to appear.

Veteran China Internet watchers may recall that Google launched Google.cn in January 2006 without an ICP license. It is my understanding that the Google-Gu Xiang joint venture was set up for the sole purpose of obtaining an ICP license. It is also my understanding that R&D; and advertising operations technically operate through different companies. 

If anybody has additional information or rumors they'd like to share, please feel free.

(UPDATE: Gizmodo has more speculation here: Have Google And China Resolved Their Issues?)

FURTHER NOTE: It's very possible this is a total false alarm, that no decision has yet been made, and that Google is just making their new landing page as official and legal as possible, in hopes that the decision will eventually be in their favor and perhaps also to re-assure confused users that the page is legit and not fake. It's also worth pointing out that - given that Google launched Google.cn without any ICP license at all and operated for a long time without one initially, it's very possible that the authorities could take weeks before any decision gets made. Who knows.

UPDATE 2: Google P.R.  has issued a statement:

"what you are seeing on the landing page is just our existing ICP license number at the bottom of the landing page. We have no news to report on our side and are still waiting to hear from the government."

Google's China troubles continue; Congress examines U.S. investment in Chinese censorship

In his latest blog post, Google's Chief Legal Officer David Drummond reports that Chinese authorities aren't happy with the automatic redirection of Google.cn to Hong Kong. They are threatening not to renew Google's Internet Content Provider license, which is required to legally operate any kind of Internet business in China. In an attempt to thread the legal needle, Drummond says Google.cn will now lead to a landing page which - if you click anywhere on that page - takes the user to the uncensored Google.com.hk. This is Google's convoluted way of adjusting Google.cn so that it remains technically in compliance with Chinese law while still sending Chinese users to an uncensored site. Now they just have to click through an extra page to get to the results.

It's unclear whether this will be acceptable to the Chinese authorities. It really depends on how secure or insecure they're feeling these days. In the meantime, the new landing page is a signal to Chinese users that they may want to remember Google.com.hk just in case Google.cn ceases to work, or update their browser bookmark.

What will happen next?  Any one of four scenarios is possible:

1. The Chinese government renews Google's ICP license and Google.com.hk remains unblocked. Google.cn remains just a landing page which sends users to Google.com.hk when they click anywhere on the page. While Google.com.hk remains unblocked, though specific searches containing sensitive words will continue to be blocked. Nothing has changed except that users have to click through an extra page before they can start searching.

2. The Chinese government renews Google's ICP license but blocks Google.com.hk. People can get to the landing page via Google.cn, but after clicking on it they get an error message in their browser. Users who don't know how to use circumvention tools will no longer be able to continue accessing Google's uncensored search (unless they know to go to Google.com which as of now, I believe, remains unblocked).

3. The Chinese government does not renew Google's ICP license but does not block Google.com.hk. Google.cn will no longer work. Chinese Internet users will be able to access Google.com.hk if they happen know enough to type a different URL into their browser.

4. The Chinese government does not renew Google's ICP license and also blocks Google.com.hk. In this case, users will only be able to access the Hong Kong-based uncensored search if a) they know about the Google.com.hk URL and b) know how to use proxy servers or circumvention tools.

Which one do you predict? Let me know in the comments section if you'd like.

Meanwhile, it just so happens that tomorrow the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission will be holding a hearing on "China's Information Control Practices and the Implications for the United States." I've been asked to testify on Baidu's role in China's Internet censorship system and the role played by U.S. investment in Chinese Internet censorship. My written testimony can be downloaded here (PDF).

I begin by describing China's recent political innovation which I call networked authoritarianism. I then explain how the private sector in general - and Baidu in particular - fits into this system. I discuss the impact of Google's withdrawal from China, then conclude with some comments about the role of U.S. investment. Here is my conclusion:

The question is: Even as government censorship requirements grow increasingly onerous, dominant players solidify and expand their market positions at the expense of smaller upstarts, and the frustration of many Chinese Internet executives grows, will anybody in the Chinese business community dare to challenge the government policies and practices that have caused this situation? Or will they continue to feel that they have no choice if they want to continue making money?

As I have described in my testimony, the Chinese government has transferred much of the cost of censorship to the private sector. The American investment community has so far been willing to fund Chinese innovation in censorship technologies and systems without complaint or objection. Under such circumstances, Chinese industry leaders have little incentive and less encouragement to resist government demands that often contradict even China’s own laws and constitution.

Two of Baidu’s five Directors are American. U.S. investors provided much of Baidu’s startup capital. U.S. institutional investors own significant stakes in the company.To be fair, American investment dollars support many businesses around the world that human rights groups and environmentalists have identified as unethical or destructive to our health and our planet. Yet in the wake of the financial crisis and the BP oil spill, it is also clear that millions of people around the world are paying an unacceptably high price for unethical – or at very least amoral – investment practices. We will not see the end of our problems unless industry and investors own up to their broader responsibilities to society and to the planet. I predict that the prospects for freedom and democracy around the world will similarly be diminished if our investments continue to support censorship and surveillance.

For the ethical investor, there are two possible responses to this problem. One is divestment from all ethically challenging situations. The other is engagement and advocacy, using financial leverage to work for positive change in industry practices and even government regulation.  Such efforts often require patience and take time to bear fruit, but experience in other sectors such as mining and manufacturing show that proactive, socially responsible investment combined with advocacy and engagement can make a difference over time.

I believe the Chinese people would be worse off if all American companies and investors were to abandon the Chinese Internet. Investors who remain silent, however, should be clear about what kind of innovation they are financing. In addition to whatever product or service they set out to invest in, they are also supporting a disturbing new political innovation: networked authoritarianism.

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