MSN Blogs Shuts Down Chinese Journalist; RSF’s Regulation Proposal

Microsoft is being roundly criticized for censoring the MSN Spaces blog of a Chinese journalist in response to demands from Chinese censors, although not as severely as Yahoo! was criticized last year for helping the Chinese police uncover the identity of an online critic of the government.

Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders has put forward its suggestion for a law that would essentially require international U.S.-based companies to respect freedom of expression when operating in repressive countries like China.

Many might first dismiss this as a naive solution, saying that the Chinese would just take their business elsewhere, or that the censors would find a way to clamp down regardless of what U.S. companies did. Interestingly though, this might be a law that could not only work, but that U.S.-based companies like Microsoft and Yahoo! might secretly be in favor of, although they could never say so publicly without alienating connections in the Chinese government.

As long as no such law exists, the Chinese can tell companies like Microsoft that if Microsoft doesn’t censor its own users, the Chinese will stop it from doing business there. Now, the Chinese censors are probably bluffing - they wouldn’t really want their business users to lose all the usefulness provided by a site like Google or Yahoo!, and although they have blocked sub-features of these sites at times, those decisions were always rescinded later - but the censors know that Microsoft can’t afford to risk losing the business, so Microsoft will probably go along with the demands.

But if the law *required* Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! not to go along with the demands of the Chinese, then those companies would essentially be forced to call the bluff of the Chinese censors. And at that point, the Chinese government would have to decide if it’s really worth foregoing all the benefits of those companies’ Web sites and services, just because a particular company wouldn’t make a symbolic gesture (like Microsoft blocking “democracy” and “Taiwan independence” from appearing in the titles of users’ blogs). If they let the companies do business there anyway, then Microsoft & Co. are now better off than they were before - all of the benefits of doing business in China; none of the criticism from human rights groups.

Microsoft and Yahoo! would be in the interesting position, from a game-theory point of view, of being glad their hands are tied, because it lets them forcibly call the other side’s bluff. Similar to the car salesman who comes back and says “Sorry, my boss won’t let me go below $3,000″ - but of course he’s glad his boss won’t let him, because he doesn’t have to spend any more time arguing about it with the likes of you, and now the ball is in your court.

Some senior Microsoft execs have made the news by weighing in on the issue on their own personal blogs. Michael Connolly writes:

“We’ve made a choice to run a service in China, and to do that, we need to adhere to local regulations and laws.”

But that’s just it - we don’t know for sure that the Chinese would kick them out if they didn’t comply, but Microsoft would have a stronger bargaining position if they were bound by a law like the one RSF proposes. Another exec wrote:

“There are times when I think we should all stop doing business with China until they become a democracy. And then I think about how well that has worked with Cuba.”

But RSF and other critics aren’t proposing a total pullout or an embargo on China, only a law that would require U.S.-based companies to respect human rights while operating in that country.

In this instance, the action by Microsoft seemed mostly symbolic, since the content that was deleted can be hosted anywhere. However, the next time something like this happens, it might not be so symbolic, as when Yahoo! helped the Chinese police identify and arrest a government critic.

[Bennett Haselton]

[tags]msn spaces,chinese censorship,reporters without borders,peacefire,rsf proposal[/tags]