With Google's decision today to shut down its Chinese-based search engine, google.cn, the company has won considerable praise from organizations concerned about its human rights record. This approval stands in stark contrast to the condemnation the company received when first entering the country in 2006. The Financial Times cartoonist Ingram Pinn captured these contrasting perspectives perfectly, depicting Google as the speech-suppressing "Great Firewall of China" in 2006, then casting the company as the lone protestor stopping the tanks in their tracks in 2010.
Google's decision again raises a question of serious interest to business, the public, and governments: When is it right to cut ties and leave a country on human rights grounds?
Leaving often seems like the clear-cut ethical winner in this debate. There often is, however, a case for companies to stay, provided there is a commitment to making a positive impact on human rights. Leaving may look and feel great to those of us in the West, but exiting a market may not always have the desired impact.
Consider the case of the consumer electronics companies. They are increasingly under fire about whether the metals they source from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)--tin, tantalum, and tungsten--may be helping fund the purchase of weapons that fuel violence and human rights abuses in one of the world's toughest conflict zones. There is a consensus that "conflict minerals" should be eliminated from the electronics industry, and the tempting next step is to cut out all minerals sourced from the DRC.
But that decision isn't as simple as it may seem: Because end buyers purchase from refiners that often combine ore from multiple sources, traceability remains a problem, and it might not even be practical to "leave" the country.
By contrast, what if companies were to leverage their purchasing power to drive positive change in the DRC? Perhaps there is a role for business to bring "development-oriented metals" to market by identifying specific mines where the benefits of mining are shared locally and production upholds human rights. As an alternative to leaving, companies could also explore diplomatic channels to encourage a sustainable trade in minerals in the DRC and the surrounding region.
GE is taking a related approach in China and Vietnam, where the issues are very different than those in the DRC. Among the company's top corporate responsibility priorities is "rule of law." GE's leadership believes that effective government in emerging markets is critical for both business success and human rights, and the company therefore works with government and civil society to establish transparent legal systems, encourage open law-drafting processes, and develop well-trained judges and lawyers. For example, GE attorneys teach classes at law schools in both countries, and the company's foundation also invests in rule-of-law initiatives by providing grants such as one in China to an organization focused on commercial law, intellectual property rights protection, and citizens' rights, and another in Vietnam to a program that aims to strengthen courts and enhance legal transparency.
One might conclude that the comparisons between countries don't work, because all situations are different. In fact, that is exactly the point: When it comes to determining whether a company's decision to enter or exit a market is good or bad for human rights, there's no one-size-fits-all rule, and the ethics of the decision will vary considerably with the context.
As such, "are you in or are you out" may be the wrong question. No company automatically advances human rights by leaving a country, and, likewise, no company automatically improves the situation by staying. In all but the worst cases, it's how business participates in challenging markets that is the ultimate test. Does the company have a clear understanding of how its products, services, and market presence will impact human rights? Has the company identified its most significant human rights risks, and does it understand how to mitigate them? Is it working with sympathetic government partners to advance human rights?
Let's also remember the opinions of the people these decisions are designed to support: the local population. Many companies left South Africa and Burma because democratically legitimized local movements called for mass divestments, which is not the case in China today.
We don't know yet whether Google's decision, which essentially takes them out of the search business in China, will increase freedom of expression, privacy, and security. Some argue that the company should distance itself from censorship by leaving; others argue that the company should stay with a search engine that filters less (and more transparently) than the local competition. Whatever one's opinion, the fact that an increasing number of companies are weighing these decisions demonstrates that human rights considerations are reaching senior leaders in business like never before.
The time has come for us to applaud those companies that seek to integrate human rights into their decision-making, to criticize those that don't -- and to be open to the fact that this could mean praising both companies that seek to make an impact by staying in difficult markets as well as those that decide to leave.
Aron Cramer is President and CEO of BSR, a global business network and consultancy focused on sustainability, and the coauthor of the forthcoming book Sustainable Excellence (Rodale 2010). Dunstan Allison Hope is BSR's Managing Director, ICT Practice, and the coauthor of the forthcoming book Big Business, Big Responsibilities (Palgrave Macmillan 2010).
Follow Aron Cramer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/aroncramer
Michael Wolff: Google Sticks to Its Guns: But What Does China Really Want?
The lesson of utter disaster of Russian dalliance with Western economic and political liberal dogmas has been absorbed by the Chinese.
Furthermore, the suppression of Tiananmen Square disturbances prevented chaos and led to unprecedented prosperity and contentment.
Additionally, the suppression of disturbances led directly towards sublimation of young people's' energies toward culturally and economically beneficial activities.
This is the Yin and Yang balance between will-to- freedom and will- to-order. It's a delicate dance. Chinese have been doing longer than anyone. And are demonstrably doing it VERY right now.
Proof--Google is maintaining and expanding ALL other Chinese business involvements.
2. The fight over Google appears relevant primarily to Americans.
Reality-- Google is a minor search engine player in China ( about 30% of the searrch market ),
Point of fact (II): Google provides a service people are fond of. They aren’t “an agent of a repressive regime” any more than Fox News is an agent of the US Government.
Comment: There have been photos in the press of Chinese citizens having their pictures taken, by friends, in front of Google China’s office and iconic sign. They are happy, waving the obligatory peace sign, and basically showing support for Google . . . after the controversy blew up.
Question: Why didn’t this blow up when Google complied with German law, and restricted access, in Germany, to anything related to Nazis?
Answer: We don’t like Nazis. (Is that good enough?)
Microsoft and Intel decisively lost their challenges to the EU laws. If Google does not lose China's challenge, what will that mean?
If Google ties this to suspected Chinese government hacking to track down dissidents, as Pater Baron remarked in an NPR interview this afternoon, that's one thing. China's comeback, according to him, was that Google is "too closely tied to US government"--because it will share its records on what you and I search for--and that's another thing.
Therefore, Google is operating as an arm of the US government, which makes the suspected hacking by the Chinese government more interesting yet.
Google's upped the ante by redirecting searches to Hong Kong. Being taken over by China in 1999 didn't mean Hong Kong became Chinese overnight. How long will Hong Kong's uncensored Google search last? Google, to its credit, made it clear that the decision was made by the US, not by Google's Chinese employees in any capacity.
If free communications really fuels a local economy, what happens in Hong Kong as a result could prove very interesting.
My observation is that Google is not preceived as a hero in China but an organization trying to destabilize China without success.
When Google made the decision to add that disclaimer, it was a step in the right direction but did not address the fundamental problem that the company was essentially given a list of words to censor (human rights, democracy, Falun Gong, Tianenmen Square, etc) and they had to develop algorithms to eliminate search results - which for years they willingly did. They were active participants in the censorship, agents of repression, and that was the problem. It is indeed a human rights abuse, whether it's done by a government or a company. See Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Just look at the Rio Tinto case where the govt arrested top executives, all Chinese nationals, on trumped up charges of corruption. Now, after several months in prison under horrendous conditions, a couple have pleaded guilty to very mild cases of corruption. They say the accepted bribes from Chinese businessmen, which hardly proves the initial charges that the company was itself paying off Chinese companies so that they would accept higher mineral prices.
I agree with Paul Krugman and other keen Asia observers: The United States, Europe and Japan (just for starters) need to take a much firmer stance on Chinese business and governmental practices. Increasingly, we have NOTHING TO LOSE!
Being disingenuous on purpose? To spark debate perhaps?
We 'fought', ostensibly, the spread of Communism in Vietnam and suffered the deaths of tens of thousands of our Countrymen/Countrywomen. What are we about in China? We climb in bed with the Devil and expect what?
Astoundingly dull Americans we are.
"Dull" Eisenhower argued against any such intervention, and some even "duller" people argued that we would have been better off playing the Vietnamese off against the Chinese.
As for me, I am the king of the dullards because I not only fall into the latter category (long live the Vietnamese!), but believe that we are just going to work ourselves through the details of a very tough relationship with the world's fastest rising star, China.
US dullards recognize that America must contend with countries as they are and not as we wish they were.
Ditto for America itself!
The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia killed off at least a million people, not by bombing, but by selecting people just like you and me (educated people), sending them to harsh work camps and then killing them.
The Khmer Rouge were supported by your government, the Peoples Republic of China.
When the leaders of a united Vietnam overthrew this genocidal regime, your government again intervened by sending hundreds of thousands of soldiers to attack North Vietnam.
The North Vietnamese fought valiantly, as they did against the Americans, and caused your country's army so many losses that China had to withdraw its forces. The Vietnamese defeated the Chinese "Peoples Army" be deploying only their local militias and regular army units, while holding their elite army units in reserve.
The Vietnamese defense of their homeland against your government is one of the most heroic chapters in human history.
Color me a reactionary, but how about when there are human rights grounds?