Editorial: A cost of doing business?

Thursday, Feb. 16, 2006 | 12:31 p.m.

A story by the Associated Press shows that Rep. Tom Lantos of California isn't mincing words regarding American-based Internet companies that have agreed to severe restrictions imposed by the Chinese government, including censoring information, so they can operate there.

"Your abhorrent actions in China are a disgrace," Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, told Internet executives during a hearing Wednesday. "I simply don't understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."

Neither do we - and neither does Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, who said Google had acted "as a functionary of the Chinese government. ... This is astonishing."

A Google executive appearing before Congress, Elliot Schrage, acknowledged that "the requirements of doing business in China include self-censorship - something that runs counter to Google's most basic values and commitments as a company."

Nonetheless, Schrage said he believed Google's presence would "make a meaningful, though imperfect, contribution to the overall expansion of access to information in China."

We, however, agree with the concerns expressed by the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit group that defends the rights of journalists worldwide to report the news without fear of censorship or reprisals. "Our great fear is that China's authoritarian approach - aided by U.S.-based Internet companies - will become the model for repressive regimes wishing to restrict the flow of information," the group's executive director, Ann Cooper, said.

It also is chilling that, as the Committee to Protect Journalists has noted, a Chinese journalist, Shi Tao, was given a 10-year prison sentence for a trumped-up charge of leaking "state secrets" in an e-mail he sent in 2004. The conviction of Shi Tao was made possible after Yahoo helped Chinese officials identify him.

Companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco Systems are hoping that they can capitalize on a booming Internet market in China, where there are already 110 million Internet users. But when the price of doing business means agreeing to block foreign Web sites that are objectionable to the Chinese government and agreeing to enforce government censorship, then it is too high.