Chinese Professor Argues Google Should Launch A Censored Search Engine In China

from the leaves-out-the-problems dept

There's been quite a lot of reasonable uproar over the leaked plans for Google to re-enter the Chinese market with a censored, locked down search engine. There's a lot of history there, but giving in to the authoritarian government's desire to block access to all sorts of content would seem to go very much against Google's stated focus on helping provide access to information around the globe. There have been numerous recent reports of Google employees protesting this decision internally, and even some employees have quit Google to put an exclamation point on just how against this idea they are. Recently an opinion piece in the South China Morning Post from a Chinese professor started making the rounds, arguing that "even a censored Google search engine would be better" for people in China than its current main search engine, Baidu.

The argument from Bai Tongdong, a professor of philosophy at Fudan University, is pretty straightforward. More or less, it argues that Baidu is not a very good search engine. Google, even in a heavily censored fashion, is almost certainly going to be a lot better, and thus it will certainly aid in getting everyday people in China more access to information:

As a college professor, I find Baidu’s search results on scholarly matters deeply frustrating, because they don’t lead me to the webpages I wish to find. In contrast, Google’s search results are far more useful. Thanks to my part-time employment at New York University’s law school, I can use its virtual private networks (VPN) to access Google, a benefit that I consider more valuable than the extra pay.

And it is not just terrible search results, and the lack of access to useful tools such as Google Books. Baidu’s shameless commercialisation of its search engine has been the subject of controversy. For example, companies could – and maybe still can – bid for the top spots in Baidu’s search results, and users are not warned that these results are the outcome of commercial bidding and not sorted by relevance, as is the practice with Google.

In one case that sparked a public outcry, a young man used Baidu to search for treatments and clinics for the rare form of the cancer he suffered from. The man’s family spent over 200,000 yuan (US$29,000) on an experimental treatment at one of the for-profit hospitals that topped his Baidu search, but the treatment was unsuccessful and he died. The search results could have caused him to miss potentially life-saving treatment.

Undoubtedly this is true. It would certainly probably improve the search engine results and options for Chinese residents. But that's not really the point of why Google left China nearly a decade ago, nor the reason why people are concerned about its plans for a censored re-entry. I don't think anyone denies that it probably would be useful for Chinese residents and citizens. The question is at what cost does this come? Giving into an authoritarian government, hiding important and often useful information -- including information critical or mocking of the Chinese government -- is something that many people think is fundamentally wrong. Appeasing authoritarian governments never leads to good outcomes.

The article suggests that since it would improve the lives of the average Chinese individual, and because Google could always pull out again if it felt pressured to go to far in the moderation of the search engine, that this shouldn't be a huge concern. But that ignores the idea that having the government censor the search engine results in the first place should already be seen as a bridge too far.

Finally, he argues against the idea that Google staying out of China leads to China changing its policies, and thus, Google should re-enter the market:

...the simple fact is that, although it has been years since Google exited China, nothing much has changed or is expected to change for better in those areas. While the situation can’t worsen, there is a chance that Google might prompt an improvement.

In a world in which the only choices available are between the purely good and the purely evil, that is, in a world that has never existed and will never exist, “do no evil” would be a good guiding principle. In the world we live in though, the practical motto should be “do the lesser evil”. For, after all, a morally compromised Google is still better than Baidu.

That's really throwing in the towel entirely, though. The entire argument is based on the idea that Google hoped that leaving China would prompt some change in its unhealthy censorship policies. But, if true, that would entrust to Google a lot more power than I think even the biggest Google booster thinks the company has. It didn't pull out of China to try to force China's hand. It pulled out of China because it believed China's censorship and surveillance campaigns were simply wrong. That hasn't changed, and that's why Google shouldn't give in here. It's not about some big calculus about what's better for whom. It's about not censoring content at the behest of an authoritarian censorship-happy government.

Filed Under: censorship, china, dragonfly, search, suppression
Companies: baidu, google