New tests have been performed by a press advocacy group based in Paris to show the extent to which search engines are still censoring results in China. Yahoo.cn is the worst offender, even more so than Baidu.cn - China's local search engine - which is quite frankly more than a little surprising. A whopping 97% of 'subversive' keyword searches on Yahoo.cn returned pro-Beijing results, compared with 83% on Google.cn and 78% on MSN.cn. To give you an idea of just how much censorship is going on behind the Great Wall, the same searches using 'subversive' keywords on Google.com returns 28% pro-Beijing results.
Yahoo! also employs the tactic of blocking keywords for sensitive political subjects such as 'Tibet independence' and 'Tiananmen Square massacre' returning an error message, a censor technique also adopted by Baidu.cn. Microsoft and Google not appear to filter results in this way but they do refuse to include sites considered illegal by the Chinese government.
Of course, restricting access to information has become part of doing business in the communist nation of China for internet companies. This has obviously had a negative affect on how people in democratic countries view the situation. Should companies such as Google with their headquarters in the 'freedom fighting US of A' even be operating in China if it involves such heavy censorship? Would it be ultimately better to withdraw in protest than tarnish your company's reputation and ethos, even if it meant sacrificing the huge investment? Surely such an action would have resounding political, ethical and financial affects for the Chinese government as the publicity spins on and on and on...
I do understand the situation of the business bods - more than 100 million Chinese have access to the internet which is less than one tenth of the current population of China. That is a whole lot of users with potential spending power and would be a huge slice of pie to miss out on in terms of advertising revenue; particularly for search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN, who have such strong advertising based business models.
The issue here is, however, not the money - this is no longer the Eighties, thank God. In the immortal words of Austin Powers, we are now living in a world of freedom with responsibility - at least the lucky ones are. This is something we should be aspiring to attain for everyone. Google in particular has tried to single itself out for its ethical stance to business with the mantra 'Do no evil'.
In complete contrast to the views in the west and despite the censorship, six out of ten Chinese people believe that the internet will increase political transparency and provide more opportunities for criticising the Beijing government. Interestingly, Americans are less than half as likely to believe that. This premise was confirmed by a separate study undertaken by the Canadian Internet Project which found that 'more than any country in the world, people in China see the internet as giving them more say in government and more political power'. There is undoubtedly more than a little irony in there.
