Helping China's Censors

While working in China in the late 1990s, I happened to read Timothy Garton Ash's The File. In East Germany after the Berlin wall fell, East Germans were suddenly able to access their Stasi police files. Police informants included neighbors, lovers, spouses and even people's own children. After I described the book to Chinese friends, one remarked: "That day will come in China too. Then I'll know who my real friends are."

Today China's leaders are fighting hard not to follow their East German and Soviet counterparts into the dustbin of history. Chinese censors, enlisting the help of private Internet companies--both domestic and foreign--have been working overtime to block and remove content that challenges the Chinese Communist Party's authority. But they can't keep up with the viral spread of information in cyberspace.

The question is not whether the Chinese Communist Party will succeed in hanging on to power; it's: For how long? And when change comes, will Chinese people thank companies like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Cisco for bringing them the Internet as a catalyst for freedom, or will they curse them for having helped a corrupt and unaccountable regime hold power longer than it might have? Will they mutter about hypocrites who talked a big game about freedom and democracy--but who weren't willing to forgo a cent of profit to help non-Americans realize those ideals?

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