In a typically excellent column, Gady Epstein, the good Forbes columnist (and Beijing bureau chief), looks at Hillary Clinton’s remarks yesterday on Internet freedom, China’s predictably prickly reaction to them, and the effect this all might have on the future of Google in China (as well as the broader issue of Internet freedom in China). I like the way he frames the issue:

Authoritarian regimes have adapted to the Internet, giving people enough freedom online that most have not resisted censorship and controls. Google.cn was, insidiously, a part of that success in China, stamping an authoritarian system of self-censorship with the Google brand of legitimacy.

Google wants to grab that brand back. Having the U.S. on its side may not help the company’s short-term commercial interests, and it may well embolden hard-liners in China’s government. But as Clinton alluded to Thursday, the U.S. has a brand to protect as well. Many in the world still look to the U.S. for leadership on principles, and the Internet needs it.

“On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress,” Clinton said. “But the United States does.”

Of course this fight is about much more than China vs. the U.S, or even China vs. Google. It is about a future of nation-states, corporations and other nonstate actors struggling to define liberty on the Internet. The U.S. and Google being on the same side of that struggle? I see that as a good thing.

I do, too. He also links to a must-read column in the Global Times (which he refers to, not without some justification, as “the Communist Party’s new McPaper aimed at foreigners”) that shows us where this is heading – the usual accusations and counter-accusations between the US and China, which threaten to drownout the actual issue of cyberfreedom. I found the GT piece disappointing considering how well the McPaper started off when this issue arose last week:

Google’s “New approach to China,” as spelled out in the title of its recent statement, would do no good to China, either. Should the world’s most populous nation fail to provide a foothold to the world’s top search engine, it would imply a setback to China and serious loss to China’s Net culture. The information highway demands not only safe driving but also free flow of traffic. And, in the interests of the majority’s right to know, free flow of information should take precedence in a civil society.

n a transitional society like China, the existence of censorship can be justified as allowing full play to multifarious and disorderly search results poses unprecedented risks to vulnerable netizens and social stability.

But the government must face up to the challenge of where and how to put the checkpoints on the highway. A sensitive and shrewd government should have the vision and savvy to place the right kind of checkpoints at the right place and at the right time for ensuring the free flow of highway traffic as much as possible in the public.

It almost sounds like a non-Chinese paper! Well, that relatively restrained and objective approach was nice while it lasted. The column Epstein points to today is somewhat less open-minded.

Unlike advanced Western countries, Chinese society is still vulnerable to the effect of multifarious information flowing in, especially when it is for creating disorder.

Western countries have long indoctrinated non-Western nations on the issue of freedom of speech. It is an aggressive political and diplomatic strategy, rather than a desire for moral values, that has led them to do so.

The free flow of information is an universal value treasured in all nations, including China, but the US government’s ideological imposition is unacceptable and, for that reason, will not be allowed to succeed. China’s real stake in the “free flow of information” is evident in its refusal to be victimized by information imperialism.

Oy. Information imperialism indeed. Anybody can put anything they want up on the Internet. The only ones who get hysterical about it are those who are insecure and frightened. You know, sticks and stones….

I loved Hillary’s line, “On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress. But the United States does.” I thought she could have gone further in her speech, but then again, diplomacy is what she’s there for, and that she went as far as she did was enough to whip the CCP into its signature apoplexy. Let’s hope the back-and-forth is short-lived, and that it helps lead to at least some improvement of cyberfreedom in countries that fear it. As Epstein eloquently noted,

The world’s leading superpower and the world’s leading Internet company have made a clear statement that fundamental freedoms–of expression, of assembly–must apply in cyberspace. They have taken note that, as Clinton said Thursday, these freedoms won’t flourish on their own, despite techno-Utopian predictions to the contrary.

So this dialogue is a good thing. The Great Firewall isn’t coming down, not anytime soon, but this adds to the pressure that one day might lead to its long-awaited passing.

Chinayouren has a delightful new post that reminded me yet again of how much the outside world still doesn’t understand China. It’s a great post on a couple of levels, but this section, written in response to readers outside of China who wrote to Chinayouren “proposing ideas to help ‘free the Chinese’ from the claws of the GFW,” really jumped out at me:

But listen, the sad reality is, the CCP’s systems of censorship are so effective not because they are diabolically sophisticated, but because… because the Chinese netizens can’t give a damn if they are being censored by their government or not.

You don’t believe me? Then perhaps you have a better theory to explain why nobody uses the widely available, free web proxies to surf the internet. Or why the majority of Chinese netizens still use Google.cn when they have an identical search engine that is not manipulated on Google.com

Shocking, right? But not so much. The truth is that, in spite of popular funny memes and the occasional juvenile rant, the majority of Chinese who are rich enough to use the internet are happy with the status quo. They do find it mildly annoying to be treated like children by the CCP, but as long as the bills are paid, they don’t think so much of it.

And this is also why, if someone wants to create a device against the GFW, the user activated systems like proxies or Tor are not effective, because people simply don’t use them.

I’ve written about this before more than a year ago, when I said Westerners need to understand that what seems awful to us doesn’t seem nearly so awful to those we are trying to “protect.”

[W]e can’t distort what the actual situation is in China. 99.9 out of 100 people here will tell you this [Internet censorship] is not a problem to them, and even to those who see it as such, it does not rank high on their list of urgent needs.

Most Chinese aren’t trying to circumvent the Great Firewall. Those who want to look at blocked sites know how to do it, and they are, I believe, a very small minority.

Chinayouren then rails against another shibboleth, and what he says here is far more controversial. He shatters – to his own satisfaction, at least – the widely held belief (shall we call it a “meme”?) of many English-language China bloggers that a censored google.cn was far better than no google.cn. A belief, I have to admit, I’ve held myself, though maybe I’m not so sure after reading this. He points out what should be an obvious fact, but one that we may tend to overlook, namely that the very essence of a censored google.cn is, after all, SEM (search engine manipulation).

The most amusing thing in the Google crisis is all the commentators crying about the loss of Google.cn and its negative consequences for the freedom of the Chinese. In fact, I maintain that Google.cn is the most evil product to ever have existed in the Chinese internet, and the World will be a better place without it.

That is because, unlike the Chinese official sites that practice censorship, what the search engines do is manipulation. Why? Because Google.cn is not a content site in itself, it is a gateway to the internet. When people type in a keyword into the search field, they are actually trusting it to return a fair picture of what is on the net.

When you type a “sensitive” term and G.cn removes all the results except the People’s Daily and Xinhua, Google’s responsibility is double: not only it supports those often objectible views on the first page, but it also implicitly states that it is the ONLY opinion existing in the World.

And the worse is, the Chinese who believed that would be right to do so, because Google’s well known principles clearly specify their commitment to give all the information available in a democratic way. The little warning message that is displayed on Google.cn SEM searches is meant to avoid this situation, but it is tiny and often placed right at the bottom of the page, so most Chinese users just ignore it.

In the case of Google.cn, SEM is not about “good” or “evil”. It is about breaking the very principles that give a sense to the Google company, and it is understandable that Google has never been comfortable with it.

I have to give this post, and this blog, very high marks for laying its argument on the line without sentimentality or coddling, even if what he says flies in the face of what a lot of us want to hear. This is just one of many excellent posts on the subject over at Chinayouren.

Another blogger shares his thoughts about everyone’s favorite Forbes columnist. Go there.

The Far West China blog is wondering why Western media are reporting that the Internet in Xinjiang has been “restored.” Go to his site to see vivid examples of how the blatant censorship continues. (And I’d love to see how my trolls explain the discrepancies as a “server issue” or a “bad IP address.” It’s right here for everyone to see, pure, unashamed censorship.)

Definitely a case of restoration with Chinese characteristics.

I spotted this article earlier today in the Times of London and even tweeted it as one of the oddest stories I’d ever seen in a newspaper. I was debating writing a comic piece about it, but this other blogger beat me to it. I really needed that laugh after the misery of today’s election in our most liberal state.

Words totally fail me. And I won’t say another word. Just go and see for yourself.

Am I really reading this?

Absolutely not. James Fallows, in another splendid update on the Google drama, notes the various reports coming out that it’s business as usual at Google’s Haidian headquarters – which in no way contradicts anything Google has said about the situation.

{The latest reports] indicate that Google has not pulled up stakes from China and is still operating as if it might have a future there. Is that hypocritical? I don’t think so: I think it’s in keeping with the initial announced intention to reconsider all options. As I mentioned the first time around, I think this situation is likely to turn out either lose-lose-lose — for Google (outside the Chinese market), for the Chinese government (publicly embarrassed, which will bring out worse rather than better tendencies), and for the Chinese public (symbolically cut off that much more from the mainstream of modern development, and with an internet ecology worse than it could be, with the absence of a major innovative competitor) — or win-win-win for the same parties, if the government can address Google’s complaints in a way that allows the company to remain. I assume that off-stage action toward that end is underway now.

My trolls have already started blasting Google as if it suddenly realized it made an awful mistake and is changing its mind. Not true. That may happen; I don’t know. But Google never said they were leaving China.

Fallows also posts a moving letter he was sent from a non-Chinese reader living in China. I just want to paste the powerful closing lines.

I recently showed a friend what it was like to surf the internet on the other side of the chinese firewall (thank you for your long ago recommendation of witopia). After showing sites with pictures and info regarding topics such as Tiananmen Square, the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, etc my friend was in tears. She had been very aware that China was censoring information and putting its own spin on events, but she never grasped its extent. The next day she said to me “I hate what my country has done and feel very sad. But I also still have a love for China. I don’t know what it is I really feel.” I told her that in this case I might be able to appreciate exactly what she was feeling and welcomed her to the world of far from perfect countries.

I remember at my office in Beijing when I showed my Chinese colleagues photos of Tank Man, a photo that practically none had ever seen. They told me the only photos they’d seen of June 4 were of Chinese soldiers murdered and burned by angry workers. They were amazed when I told them about Tank Man and why he captured the imagination of the world outside of China. And I remember one of them arguing with me that he should have conformed and not meddled in affairs that weren’t his business. But hey, at least we were having a dialogue about it.

This all brings back to mind a conversation I had with one of the very first friends I had in China back in 2002. I asked about how she felt about her country, and she said how much she loved China. “I love my country,” she said, “but my country doesn’t love me.” (I think she told me that was a popular saying, but honestly I don’t remember so well.) Very powerful words. The girl referenced in the letter above who suddenly realizes all that her government is hiding from her, she is actually saying the same thing. She loves her country, but her country doesn’t love her. They don’t trust her enough to know and learn and think for herself.

“I love my country, but my country doesn’t love me.”

I haven’t written about the US in quite a while, but tonight it’s the US I’m thinking about. It seems that tomorrow’s election in Massachusetts to fill Kennedy’s seat will almost certainly go to a Republican, which will end the Dem’s 60-seat majority and potentially result in the early death of “Obamacare,” an imperfect but huge first step toward true healthcare reform.

This letter a reader wrote to another blogger really resonated with me:

The past year has been a very difficult one for me, personally and professionally. I’ve been up a lot more than I’ve been down, and I’ve been angry and frustrated with life, as we all are at times. But I can’t remember the last time I felt such overwhelming rage toward a group of people as I have felt toward the Republican Party and the conservative movement since President Obama’s election.

I simply cannot grasp what motivates these people, what compels them to thwart even the smallest attempts to clean up the enormous destruction they wrought under Bush and Cheney. Irresponsible, hateful, mendacious, sleazy, destructive – these words do not even begin to describe them.

I am unemployed and have not found a new job after almost a year of searching. I have a mortgage. I also have a preexisting medical condition, thanks to emergency surgery I had to undergo nearly 18 months ago. My unemployment benefits expire in five months, my COBRA not long after. Like untold millions of Americans, I am preparing for the worst as the economy slogs through its agonizing turnaround.

I voted for Obama with proud but open eyes, knowing full well not just the magnitude of the tasks he faced, but the pure, unrestrained malevolence of his opposition. Health care reform will unquestionably help people like me. And now some low-rent hairdo, whose sole claim to fame is posing naked for some ladies’ magazine way back when, may happily destroy whatever chance this country has at moving in a more just, humane, and morally and fiscally responsible direction.

With unemployment the highest it’s ever been in my lifetime, by far, the number of Americans on COBRA, including good friends of mine, is unprecedented, and all of them are at risk if this fails. And I look with horror at what some liberal bloggers who can’t adjust to the fact that our elected officials are not ready to approve a public option are doing to sabotage what we’ve got and cause serious harm to millions of Americans who see the healthcare bill as their last chance for survival. More pragmatic liberals (like me and this one) are appalled.

I was reading today about how battered my state has been by the recession. We are about to close most of our state parks. We are slashing services. Our next-door neighbor California is bleeding to death. Most US states are teetering near bankruptcy. Make no mistake – straits don’t get much more dire than this.

You are witnessing a debt crisis play out in slow motion across the entire United States. California is going down first, then the dominos will start to fall. You don’t think there is a crisis brewing in states like Michigan when Detroit has an effective unemployment rate of 50%? The implosion is coming- it’s only a matter of time.

And where will our attention be focused? On the idiocies of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, on the preposterous wedge issues that place us in in permanent armed camps, ever at one another’s throats over issues that hold little or no actual relevance to any of us.

It is at moments like this that I wish we had an authoritarian ruler who could take over for a few years, a clear-headed liberal in the classical sense who could ram things through and get them done without giving a thought to the shrieks and cackles of the deranged fringes of either side. It’s at moments like this when I think, “The USA could use a little China, or at least a little Singapore.” A benevolent despot who can engineer solutions and force them to happen.

Of course, this is impossible, because once we agree to give up pluralism we lose control and anything can happen, as history has shown us. Franz Papen tried a similar experiment in 1933. Nothing can be more dangerous, considering the human frailties and temptations of anyone invested with vast power. But it’s nice to dream now and then.

Meanwhile, there will be no sweet dreams tonight for the millions of Americans who view tomorrow’s election as a matter of life and death. The notion that we can afford to put healthcare off for another six or eight years until we get the just-right bill passed while leaving those at risk with no hope is too impossibly frustrating.

I may not love Obama and I may have deep issues with his not pursuing the things I’d like him to. But he is what we’ve got, and healthcare is a noble goal and we are (were?) on the verge of making a major first step, a step that would change the lives of millions of Americans for the better. I know, he should have fought harder for a public option, but that would not have made the difference; even getting the diluted bill passed in the Senate was a herculean feat.

One of my favorite bloggers goes on an explosive rant today on this very topic – fingering those on the left and the right who are seeking to sabotage Obama, and who are using nearly the exact same talking points to damn him. He echoes my thoughts to the letter:

Now do you understand why I am wondering what the hell people are thinking? I don’t understand the logic of adopting the same frames as the right. I don’t understand the idea of killing HCR because there will be something better down the road. I don’t understand why everything has to be done immediately, the way the loudest want it done, or Obama is a sell out.

Maybe I am just an authoritarian at heart, and I know I am much more comfortable supporting a movement than I am attempting to lead one, but it just seems like the Democrats worst enemy right now is other Democrats.

Exactly. This all or nothing attitude is going to kill us. It’s going to derail all the progress we made. And don’t get me wrong; at heart I am an iconoclast and and even something of an anarchist. At the same time, I am a pragmatist, and I know when we’re fucking ourselves. Like that blogger John Cole, tonight I feel like “maybe I’m an authoritarian at heart,” too.

As for Massachusetts, it’s our fault. The Republicans will win because for reason I simply cannot fathom the Democratic candidate thought she could waltz into office, Massachusetts being a liberal Democratic state, after all, right? She did everything wrong, absolutely everything. I have to give the GOP credit for spotting an opportunity and exploiting Democratic complacency and stupidity. And now we’ll all have to pay the price, with the victims being, as always, the poor, the disenfranchised and the hard-up. (Please God, prove me wrong tomorrow.)

Yes, there are definitely moments when I admire what a country like China can do, free of the curse of having to campaign for re-election every waking moment. Moments, at least.

[UPDATE: Rein has once again outdone himself. Check the comments and the links to the original blog post by Modern Lei Feng. Yikes.]

I’ve been wondering for a couple months now how Shaun Rein got one of the sweetest deals in China – a column in Forbes that lets him link to and plug his own marketing company in nearly every column as he tells readers how great business is in China and how rosy things look there. In one recent column, modestly titled, Yes, China Has Fully Arrived As A Superpower, he takes James Fallows to task for pointing out that while China is rising fast it is still far too poor and wracked with internal challenges to be considered a true superpower along the lines of the US, a not-so-outlandish assertion. These are the lines from the article that jumped out at me:

“China is certainly not altogether as wealthy as the US or Japan, as Fallows correctly observes. But it is emerging confident and relatively unscathed from the financial crisis.

Not altogether as wealthy as the US?? As if it’s almost as wealthy as the US? China’s great. I love China. But hundreds of millions of Chinese are still dirt-poor, and while China is improving and getting wealthier, to compare its society’s wealth with that of the US and Japan, even with all of their problems, is irresponsible. “Not altogether as wealthy as the US”?? But let’s get back to Google.

If Rein’s column on China emerging as a great superpower was awful, his new column on Google with the provocative title Google’s Act Of War Against China is way worse. Like all of Rein’s columns, it echoes the party line and is resoundingly “pro-China,” always playing up the great market potential of China, (where, coincidentally, Rein heads a marketing company). It’s fine to be pro-China. I consider myself to be pro-China. But we expect to read stuff like this on Chinese BBS’s, not in Forbes:

Has Google really thought through the implications of its actions, beyond just giving up the world’s fastest growing digital advertising market and the welfare of its employees and legal representatives in China? Or is this the impulsive move of an arrogant and immature leadership team used to getting its way?

Looking beyond the implications of what is, in effect, a new mode of statecraft, we should ask whether Google isn’t using censorship and cyber terrorism as an excuse to get out of China because of business failings there. If Google were making more money in China, would it necessarily have taken this stand?

Here’s what James Fallows, a real journalist who writes consistently great posts on China, has to say about the argument Rein is embracing (that Google was creating an excuse to leave China because it was trailing in market share).

Sky Canaves of the WSJ in Beijing has saved me a lot of time (and done readers a favor) by producing a catalogue of the biggest “misstatements and misunderstandings” people have promulgated about this situation.She starts with the most preposterous: that Google deliberately picked an extremely public fight with a notoriously thin-skinned government, merely to distract attention from its commercial struggles in a market where it enjoys “only” a 35% share. That Chinese officials and “netizens” would claim this is understandable. The Westerners who took it up reveal their preference for the counter-intuitive and “clever” rather than the believable.

Rein goes on to wag his finger at Google, as if he has a better grasp of their situation – as though Google is stumbling and bumbling and screwing up, with no idea how they’re damaging themselves. He almost makes it sound as if they need a good China marketing company.

Its mistakes may have long-term effects on its bottom line. Beyond giving up search for China’s 380 million netizens, the company may now find handset makers being pushed not to carry its Android operating system. That could mean a serious long-term loss of revenue in a country with 720 million mobile phone users.

Google’s China experience also illustrates that anyone operating in China needs to empower local employees to make decisions early and fast. You also need a head of your business in China who has the credibility and headquarters support to champion such decisions.

I assure you, Shaun, Google has taken the possible loss of potential revenue from its Android phone into account, but I’m sure they appreciate the free advice.

Earlier on in the article, Rein tells us, ominously,

If other foreign firms and activist investors in companies conducting business in China banded with Google, they could launch a serious threat to the stability of China, or of any country.

You see, this is Google “declaring war on China.” There is one bad guy here, the one declaring war, and other companies might follow suit leading to a potential crisis for China (which would be bad for marketing companies in China, no?). But has China no say in this matter? Why is there not a single word about what foreign companies need to go through to enter the China market? Not a word about the actual reasons Google spelled out for its decision? Instead, we are fed pablum like this:

They [China’s leaders] have also seen how 30 years of economic growth brought happiness to the Chinese population. Let’s not forget that the Pew Center has found that 86% of Chinese are happy with the direction the government is taking the country.

Normally I wouldn’t bother writing a post like this about an article that’s so blatantly one-sided and suck-uppish. But this is Forbes, and they have such a great Beijing bureau chief and the quality of most of their articles is so outstanding – I am at a loss as to how self-advertising puff pieces like this are allowed to run. I read it with disbelief.

Updated with cosmetic edits, January 17 1PM Mountain time.

Google’s jaw-dropping announcement is not about finding an excuse to leave China because it’s failing there. That and other rather ridiculous myths are exploded over here. I’ll just quote what the article say about that myth; read the whole thing for all he other myths. A fine piece.

Google’s China operations contribute a small fraction of the company’s overall revenue – the company doesn’t disclose the amount, but analysts estimate it was a few percent of its total $21.8 billion in 2008 revenue, or several hundred million dollars. But Google has made significant progress in China in recent years, raising its share of the Internet search market to roughly 36% in the fourth quarter of 2009 from 13% when it started its Chinese-language google.cn site in early 2006, according to data from research firm Analysys International.

Many other foreign companies doing business in China would gladly forgo big profits in the short term for comparable market-share growth in China—especially in an industry where China has more users than any other country (384 million according to the latest statistics). Google has also been particularly popular among the highly sought-after demographic of young, educated, white-collar urban professionals. The company’s powerful brand of business and ethics (“don’t be evil) has also earned it a fair amount of good will among Chinese Internet users, many of whom are now mourning its (still uncertain) fate. While rival Baidu still has a much larger 58% share of the search market, its brand has suffered as a result of scandals involving paid results and allegations of censorship of sensitive news stories.

Google doesn’t say if it’s profitable in China, but there’s certainly no reason to assume it’s not. Baidu, its chief rival, reported net profit of about $153 million on revenue of $468 million for 2008, when it said it had 6,387 employees. Google’s revenue would have perhaps half or two thirds that amount, but it likely has a much lower cost base in China than Baidu, since Google is believed to employ well under 1,000 employees in the country, and can use technology developed by its U.S. headquarters.

To make this kind of decision because business is poor at the moment makes no sense (though I am not convinced of the 36 percent market share figure, which seems awfully steep). Google knew this would be a long-term commitment with a lot of risk. They knew it might take many years, and it maintaining its operation in China meant very little skin off Google’s back.

James Fallows, as usual, is offering the sanest, most clear-headed and balanced opinions on the subject. Sample:

Two of the developments to date should not be surprising: the silence of the Chinese government, which is at its weakest in decision-making under time pressure; and the jubilation among some in the West, which I think reveals a pent-up reaction to endless stories about China’s rise and perhaps to recent Chinese government overreach. To me the more surprising — and significant — reaction is the clearly divided reactions within China, with some people reacting with nationalistic anger at Google’s insult but others taking the daring step of bringing flowers to the Google office etc.

Go to his blog and keep scrolling. Balanced, clear-headed and free from neurosis. How refreshing.