Nexus interruptus
While everyone was making loads of money buying and borrowing cheaply from China, its dodgy record on human rights was largely glossed over. Since the West mucked up its economic system and China emerged relatively better-off, human rights have suddenly shot up the agenda again - especially in the US.
A major proxy for attacking China in this respect has been its censorship of the Internet. Google has long been criticised for agreeing to censor search results for google.cn and, when the Gmail accounts of Chinese civil rights activists were hacked late last year, Google threatened to stop censoring in China and put that into action earlier this week, when it effectively pulled-out of mainland China by redirecting users to its Hong Kong site.
There was some initial huffing and puffing from Chinese officialdom, but the country has yet to offer a substantial response to Google's decision. However, China's second largest mobile operator - China Unicom - has announced it will remove Google's search functionality from new mobiles, according to the FT.
On the US side, there was a congressional hearing on the matter, rather cheesily entitled "Google and Internet Control in China: A Nexus Between Human Rights and Trade?" The witnesses include Google's director of US public policy - Alan Davidson - whose testimony you can read here, and Chistine Jones, general counsel at the Go Daddy group. You can see a video of the hearing here, but be aware that the coverage doesn't start until 24:30 into the clip.
Why Go Daddy - the world's biggest domain name registration company - was asked to make an appearance, we assume, was its decision to stop registering domain names in China, as reported by the Washington Post. The reason given is new Chinese rules requiring applicants to submit a bunch of personal information, including photos of themselves.
US congress has patted both Google and Go Daddy on the head and told them they're good proxies. In contrast Microsoft, which is maintaining a stance of trying to work within Chinese laws, risks banishment to the doghouse if it doesn't do what the US state wants. Perhaps the two countries aren't as far apart as they think.
