Google, the world’s biggest search engine, recently revealed it is considering shutting down its Web site in China and ceasing all business operations there. It cited attacks from Chinese hackers and overbearing official censorship and interference as reasons.
Google started operating in China in 2006 and has always complied with the Chinese government’s demands to censor certain material. It has, for example, removed the keywords “Tiananmen Square,” “Taiwanese Independence” and “Tibetan Independence” from its search engine.
Google has its own Ten Commandments. The sixth one reads “You can make money without doing evil.” Theoretically, I suppose that’s true, but this isn’t a tenet Google has been following in China.
The company has said it has already stopped cooperating with the Chinese government, refusing to filter search keywords banned by the Chinese authorities.
I did a test. Sure enough, I was able to do a search for “Tiananmen tanks,” albeit getting only 34,200 results. There was a message on the bottom of the page saying something to the effect that they couldn’t display some of the search results due to local laws and policy.
When I tried the same search on Taiwan’s Google site, it came up with 369,000 results. Something, it appears, is still being filtered.
There is a Chinese saying that goes, “If you have money, you can make the devil push the millstone for you.” In other words, money talks. Western governments and private companies are quite willing to turn a blind eye when it comes to how China operates the Internet. They want China’s money and a foothold in the market. They are not standing up to China and are even silently complicit in what is going on.
The fact that Google has gone public with this suggests that either the Chinese government or hackers went too far this time, breaking into the Gmail system to poach the account details of dissidents. If Google had let things carry on as they were, they would have seen their global e-mail market share plummet.
It will be interesting to see whether other major Internet players such as Yahoo, Apple or Microsoft will follow suit, or how the US and the EU will react. Wasn’t everyone up in arms over the “Green Dam” Internet filtering software? China had wanted to force PC manufacturers to bundle the program with all domestically sold computers.
It doesn’t matter either way. There’s nothing new about China clamping down on Internet activity, and it’s unlikely to give an inch. At best, Beijing gives everyone involved a chance to pay lip service to an ideal before they back down … and then get back to the business of making money.
There is a huge number of Internet users in China, so it doesn’t really matter in practical terms whether Google stays or goes. I say this because there are plenty of pieces of software on the Internet capable of getting around Chinese censorship.
Google’s withdrawal, however, will have enormous symbolic importance. It would mean Internet freedom in China is a lost cause. That is what is making Internet users there despondent, and what so many other people are finding difficult to take.
Transparency of information is a very important aspect of democratic governance. It is only possible to keep power in check when a government and its civil service are unable to keep information concealed.
The development of the Internet has been important in this regard: Its biggest contribution has been facilitating the rapid dissemination of information, making it much more difficult for a government to keep the public uninformed. Cloak and dagger machinations now become more complicated. We can understand, then, why governments the world over are keen to control online content.
These same governments, however, need to understand that secrecy and control of access breed curiosity. Once accessed, information is easily spread, whether via peer-to-peer transfers, ftp uploads or e-mail attachments. The more you restrict access to information, the more people will want to look at it, and in the end you can be sure they will. Secrecy is a waste of time and effort and, worse still, it earns the government nothing but notoriety as a police state.
The Internet is like a window that, once opened, gives you a global panorama. At the same time, it leaves you vulnerable to all kinds of unwanted visitors that can jump, fly or crawl in. Google should not close that window.
Rather, Google should try to open the window wider, and perhaps open a few others at the same time, thus letting more air — information — in.
Chang Ruay-shiung is vice president of National Dong Hwa University.
TRANSLATED BY PAUL COOPER
In the first year of his second term, US President Donald Trump continued to shake the foundations of the liberal international order to realize his “America first” policy. However, amid an atmosphere of uncertainty and unpredictability, the Trump administration brought some clarity to its policy toward Taiwan. As expected, bilateral trade emerged as a major priority for the new Trump administration. To secure a favorable trade deal with Taiwan, it adopted a two-pronged strategy: First, Trump accused Taiwan of “stealing” chip business from the US, indicating that if Taipei did not address Washington’s concerns in this strategic sector, it could revisit its Taiwan
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) challenges and ignores the international rules-based order by violating Taiwanese airspace using a high-flying drone: This incident is a multi-layered challenge, including a lawfare challenge against the First Island Chain, the US, and the world. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) defines lawfare as “controlling the enemy through the law or using the law to constrain the enemy.” Chen Yu-cheng (陳育正), an associate professor at the Graduate Institute of China Military Affairs Studies, at Taiwan’s Fu Hsing Kang College (National Defense University), argues the PLA uses lawfare to create a precedent and a new de facto legal
Chile has elected a new government that has the opportunity to take a fresh look at some key aspects of foreign economic policy, mainly a greater focus on Asia, including Taiwan. Still, in the great scheme of things, Chile is a small nation in Latin America, compared with giants such as Brazil and Mexico, or other major markets such as Colombia and Argentina. So why should Taiwan pay much attention to the new administration? Because the victory of Chilean president-elect Jose Antonio Kast, a right-of-center politician, can be seen as confirming that the continent is undergoing one of its periodic political shifts,
Taiwan’s long-term care system has fallen into a structural paradox. Staffing shortages have led to a situation in which almost 20 percent of the about 110,000 beds in the care system are vacant, but new patient admissions remain closed. Although the government’s “Long-term Care 3.0” program has increased subsidies and sought to integrate medical and elderly care systems, strict staff-to-patient ratios, a narrow labor pipeline and rising inflation-driven costs have left many small to medium-sized care centers struggling. With nearly 20,000 beds forced to remain empty as a consequence, the issue is not isolated management failures, but a far more
RSS