IT activism, if one can call it that, against Chinese censorship of the Internet seems to be growing. Following in Google's footsteps, two more American IT companies have announced their decision to suspend their China operations, citing repressive Chinese measures to monitor the free flow of information in cyberspace as the reason. The two companies' —domain name service providers Go Daddy and Network Solutions LLC — immediate grievance appears to be new Chinese rules that would require them to collect exhaustive data on their clients. Go Daddy representatives say that they fear such an exercise will endanger the safety of their clients, who could be targeted by the Chinese Government for their dissident beliefs. Needless to say that all of this has excited human rights activists the world over. IT companies putting aside their commercial interests and taking the moral high ground against an authoritarian Chinese regime sounds like the David and Goliath story of our times. But there is more to it than meets the eye. The primary reason why American companies like Google chose to set up shop in China is the huge Chinese market. It was simply too good to resist. Besides, setting up a business in China is not the fussiest of procedures, provided one agrees to the rules and regulations laid down by the Chinese Government. Thus, for Google and its ilk, the commercial benefits far outweighed the discomfort that they would have to go through in putting up with Chinese restrictions. Therefore, they happily signed on the dotted line, dreaming about the millions that they would be earning.
But things did not go according to plan. Although globalisation is a powerful force, there are instances where it is difficult to dislodge local flavours. From the day Google entered China, its biggest foe in the Chinese search market has been Baidu. The latter presently holds a whopping 77 per cent of the local market share. Google thought it could beat the odds, but it simply could not adjust to Chinese tastes. It is of course debatable whether the overall Chinese set-up gives Baidu an edge. But Baidu operations are subject to the same Chinese Government regulations as Google. The bottomline line is, all things equal, Google could not effectively compete with its Chinese rival. And the same holds true for the other American IT companies who are making a beeline to exit China. This does not mean that censorship of the Internet in China is not an issue. The Great Firewall programme that filters content for Chinese Internet users is both excessive and politically motivated. Hence, the moral of the story is that even though it might seem profitable to do business with no-fuss authoritarian regimes, in the long run it pays to go through the bureaucratic maze of a democratic system, even if it is a little more cumbersome.
