My wife is Bulgarian, and through her, I'm exposed to a lot of folks who escaped from behind the iron curtain before it fell. These people are a breath of fresh air to me. They understand what freedom is and how precious it is.
While most westerners are trading their freedoms for the promises of security, and smiling foolishly while they do it, I find myself more at home with my wife's group of friends, who take this stuff seriously. I think I'd get along with Mr. Brin just fine.
There are freedoms and freedoms, and it really depends on your needs.
I'm a neighbor of Bulgaria, and I remember what it was like behind the curtain, although I was only 8 when it fell.
The problem with totalitarianism is the inherent corruption it begets. This is from our experience and from history in general ... I don't think I ever heard of a totalitarian government that wasn't corrupt on all layers.
The biggest force that works against corruption is mass-media, that with all its imperfections it mostly works as a method of informing citizens. Take that away, and you'll end up with even more corruption.
My mother used to bring me bananas in a shoe-box, hiding it from her comrades because the economic rebirth of my country required sacrifices such as limiting the import of foreign goods and exporting most of our internal products (so food was in limited supply). To buy a kilo of meat you had to wake up in the morning and stay in line for a few hours. Electricity was also cut off for a few hours a day.
All of this while the leaders enjoyed such a luxury that would make the Playboy mansion fade in comparison, while mass-media hailed economic growth ... and this was the picture projected to the outside world too.
So yeah ... I'm a skeptic of China's quality of life. Either way, if you don't have the freedom to point out the government's mistakes it will degenerate into something far worse sooner or later.
I'm sorry you're feeling ill. As somebody who spends a good deal of time in China, and as somebody who feels that US freedoms are atrophying at an alarming rate, I sympathize somewhat with your position, but in all honesty, I really have to question the sincerity of somebody who would state what you just stated.
He said he feels more safe and free. In China, the criminals don't have guns, so that's one big point in favor of safety. As far as freedom, he's a Westerner, so he's granted much more freedom than the average Chinese citizen.
I've been living in China for 10 years. I'm trying to think of what these extra freedoms Westerners living here are supposed have. Can you give specific examples?
Here's one, which this article touches upon: Being able to start a blog to vent any issues you find the government to be lacking in. If I started this here in Australia, I won't have government officials knocking at my door, let alone having the site blocked at a federal level.
Yes, and he comes off sounding like an expat that doesn't realize that his freedom is merely derivative of Western freedom and enhanced by his economic standing. Of course he feels freer. Here's a challenge to him. How about I start blogging about all the problems with the government (right or left) in the U.S., and he starts doing the same with the PRC. We'll compare notes; see how many swat teams run up in my house, vs. PRC troops raiding his place. How much censorship happens. I predict he'd start to feel quite a bit less free once he comes face to face with the extent of his perceived freedom.
I'm not very moved by this action either; this type of "moral stand" usually just serves to make the doer feel righteous rather than actually helping anyone. But, as an American, I really can't understand why you would say
"For the most part, I feel more safe and free in Shanghai than the U.S."
By "safe", are you just talking about physical security from crime? If so, I don't know why crime rate is very pertinent to the discussion. (...or did you mean safe from the government?)
And how could you feel more free? I'm no expert, but I've never heard anyone say that people are more free in China, civil-rights-wise.
"For the most part, Chinese people I meet from all walks of life and age groups feel more free than they did 10 years ago."
I don't think many people would disagree that China is more free now than 10 years ago. But that doesn't mean it is sufficiently free (or as free as the US).
> For the most part, I feel more safe and free in Shanghai than the U.S. For the most part, Chinese people I meet from all walks of life and age groups feel more free than they did 10 years ago.
Did you know why Shanghai is the safer metropolitan city in the world? Because there are two things called 城管 and 暂住证.
If those two were canceled, I guarantee you Shanghai will be hell.
Minority's security is based on majority's misery. That's what China's prosperity really about.
"暂住证" literally means "temporary living permission". It's a piece of paper you have to carry along with you if you are going to live for a longer period of time (I think > 1 month) in a city which is NOT your household registration place. This is how China manages the flow of population.
"城管" (literally "urban managers") are the bunch of guys to kick you ass out of the city if you don't have the temporary living permission. (though they do a lot more than this).
Usually it's not a big issue. And when it is, it's usually in the top big cities (Beijing, Shanghai, etc).
The problem is, they have such things there, and they can choose when and where to enforce it, which can be pretty annoying. For example, it's much more likely you get "deported" from Beijing during the two sessions of National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Same applies for Olympics 2008 and World Expo 2010.
You seem to imply that Chinese culture is incompatible with freedoms as understood in a liberal democracy. I am very, very curious--what part of Chinese culture could you be talking about?
I like how even though Google is a big company, every time they have something to say, it feels like it came from a regular guy wearing a t-shirt. Maybe they are just really good at their brand marketing.
People often cite the cynical business reasons why Google pulled out of China, but this article makes me wonder why no one ever cites the reasons why China began to ramp up the pressure on Google these past two years. Baidu has come to its own (at least in the Chinese market), and maybe they don't feel they need Google anymore.
jhancock, you might be right on this, but the problem I see is that your thinking is still within the Party line. Party says that censorship must be done, so everyone should obey the Party. But what I think Brin understood is, that it is just not correct to obey Chinese communist party... that it is wrong to do that. So they just stopped to do that after realizing that it is wrong.
Not only do they show at least some humanity (which is hard for a company of their size), but they've also got big balls.
It's interesting that while this may be a PR spin, few companies would have done it because the risks are much higher than the potential gains for shareholders.
"Losing" and "winning" aren't terribly relevant in a market. "Profitable" and "not profitable" are much more important. That's not really an answer to your question, but I've never understood why people think it's such a big deal that Google's not the biggest search engine in China.
Well, you have to admit that google's investors have a notion of how well it will be able to transfer its business to developing markets... and so with all its advantages if google can't take first place in china, what does that say about its fundamental ability in non-us markets?
I'd say that the perception that google will dominate search in worldwide markets is worth about $200 per share right now.
The Chinese government is the one trying to crack down. Google can choose to be complicit and stay, or fail to be complicit, and leave.
It is not Google's fault that the government is continuing to crack down. If the end result is lowered access to information, lay the blame at the feet of the proper people: the Party.
Incidentally, if China does decide to go culturally isolationist, that's the end of me worrying about them as an economic threat over the next thirty years. None of us is as strong as all of us. (No, not even having 1 billion people will count; the disadvantage of having one dominant closed culture will dominate in the information and idea era.)
In late 2008, just after the Beijing Summer Olympic games, the censoring took a turn for the worse, Mr. Brin says. Chinese authorities also began to tell Google it needed a number of additional licenses to operate its business, according to people familiar with the requests.
Last year, Google was further hamstrung when Beijing accused it of having too much pornography on its site and forced Google to disable some features for a period. Google's YouTube video service, which China had blocked periodically over the years, became inaccessible in the country.
Even if every word you say is true, I honestly don't care. I don't give any credit to Google for agreeing to censor on behalf of the Chinese government, and every second they continued I count as a complicity with a regime that has no respect for human rights. Even if the deal didn't change one iota, it was a shitty deal and they should have pulled out sooner.
But you forgot to mention that it is the Chinese communist party in the first place who blocks ordinary Chinese from obtaining information (and forcing others to do the same blocking). Let's talk about why Chinese netizens "can't have it all"...that's the fundamental problem, not Google. Really, why they can't have it all?
If someone came to you and said "this village is dying of thirst, I want you to drill a well for them," and you had the means to do it, you probably would. Now, if that same person said "your well can provide water for the village, but we want you to add a small amount of drugs to the water, to keep the villagers satisfied with their meager existence," you'd probably tell them to go to hell.
That was the choice Google had: either offer drugged water or offer no water at all. They chose to offer no water at all.
The great thing they are doing is creating publicity so that the average chinese netizen surely knows they are getting censored results.
Btw, apologies if you are not, but your posts in this thread come off as propaganda from nationalists in PRC. Your english, however, is good enough that this is probably not the case.
This is why I was pretty content with Google's original China stance; censor, but make the censoring obvious, arguably still adding net good for the average mainlander using its services.
If it wasn't for the cyber attacks, I'd agree that this was still the best and most balanced course to take since, as I said, it was still a net good for the average user. The attempts to extract human rights activist information from Google services did change my perception though; if working within the system is setting up scenarios like that one where activists' information can be compromised by attacks, then re-evaluation of the situation was in order. Though, good arguments can still be made in the other direction I think.
It is always a hard play if you think Google's action is some kind of sanction. But Google is still seeking a way to provide service to Chinese, just without restrictions.
My guess is that part of the tussle with Chinese authorities which Google does not talk about may be demands made on Google for information on individuals.
More than censorship, it may be the surveillance aspect.
It is maybe in this context that Eric Schmidt told users: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
Maybe the Chinese authorities told Google: "If you have something on users that you don't want us to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
And Google did not want to stop keeping user information for just China....
I'm very impressed with Google's willingness to back up "Do No Evil" with hard action. For a while, I was wondering if the initial incident from last month was going to fade into obscurity, but the news from this week shows that Google is willing to walk the walk so to speak, and show it really isn't willing to sacrifice its ideals for the sake of a quarterly. Laudable.
That said, I think Brin and much of the commenting is missing a great deal of nuance. I rarely, if ever, see anyone who actually talks extensively with Chinese international students or who does business in China claim that the level of totalitarianism in the PRC actually causes anyone to live in constant fear of the government. Most likely this is a combination of regular Chinese citizens not caring and the government not being the evil empire some commentators appear to think it is.
I agree China needs to open up more both because of basic human rights principles and also because well-executed democracy is an excellent guard against government corruption, but I'm rather frustrated by the lack of attempts to understand the motivations and viewpoints of the PRC.
At its core, can you really blame the PRC for putting social stability first when it's at the head of a country that's seen constant civil war, invasion, and been on the wrong end of Imperialism since the end of the Qing Dynasty? Sure, the societal training wheels need to come off and people need to stop getting thrown in jail for bad reasons, but at least acknowledge that the PRC's actions are not pure black.
Way to go Sergey. This reinforces in my mind, the "Do No Evil" motto that Google is famous for.
It also reinforces my opinion that Eric Schmidt is a douche. All he cares about is making a buck, and would sacrifice the motto and public good will towards the company just for quarterly results.
I don't think Schmidt is a douche. I think he's just providing a balanced perspective. I suspect that Larry and Serge would run Google as a charity, if they could. Unfortunately, data centers are expensive as hell. Schmidt is just keeping the balance necessary to sustain Google.
Ok, but Schmidt's decision about China was a miscalculation, let's admit it. It brought a lot of problems for Google, and didn't bring them that much money. They weren't that much profitable there, despite quite a large market share.
There are 1.3 billion people in China. I don't think that any amount of miscalculations could have overcome that fact. It's also not that hard of a sell to say that "As long as we indicate that results were censored, we're doing what we can to bring information freedom to China one step at a time."
I disagree. What Schmidt missed is that Google has had great adoption, not just because of a good product, but because of good will from the public. By acquiescing to China's demands, they lost good will. In the long run, if they took Schmidt's path and became another media outlet for the state, they would probably end up more like Microsoft than Google, losing a lot of good will and customers in the US/Euro.
Despite what anyone says, the US/Euro market is their primary market, and the one they should be primarily concerned with keeping happy.
I applaud Google's announcement that it will be hosting a Wikileaks server to help stop internet censorship.
(yeah right... if Google actually cared about censorship it would host one... the China stuff is just a graceful way for Google to exit a market that it has failed in).
Why do I keep hearing it repeated that "Google failed in China?" They are second place but with a sizable market share, 43% to Baidu's 56% according to this link.
If your company's goal was to have 100% market share and you 'only' had 43%, would you call yourself a failure?
For highly successful companies, it's expected that they will take dominant market share within a reasonable period of time, or else they are viewed as having failed.
More importantly, Google's market share in China is symbolic of its ability to repeat its success in the US elsewhere.... this is the foundation of much of Google's current stock price.
I asked a Google finance guy what percentage of revenue comes from non-US ads and he got all red and refused to say a word. This is a HOT topic at Google and the firm can't afford to show any weakness whatsoever.
I think it has more to do with the fact goog isn't making a significant amt of money, and growth has flatlined. Beyond that goog is STILL in Hong Kong, and mainland China still has access to the .hk site AFAIK
While most westerners are trading their freedoms for the promises of security, and smiling foolishly while they do it, I find myself more at home with my wife's group of friends, who take this stuff seriously. I think I'd get along with Mr. Brin just fine.