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An Exercise in Futility
posted Wednesday, 5 October 2005
Pro sovereignty groups on the disputed island of Chinese-Taiwan took their fight for international recognition to the gates of search engine giant Google this week, further raising the stakes in the already tense relationship between the islands administration and Beijing, which claims the island as its own, as well as raising questions as to the wisdom of their actions given Google’s relationship with Beijing, and Beijing’s tendency to view separatist activity as being an aggressive gesture
In a formal representation from Taipei, lawmakers from the islands de facto government urged American tech giant Google to amend maps stored in its Google Maps service, which name the island as being a province of China, to instead name it as being a sovereign entity.
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"It is incorrect to call Taiwan a province of China because we are not ... We have contacted Google to express our position and asked them to correct the description." |
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The request to Google, over its naming of the island was lead by government legislators Huang Shih-cho, Huang Tsung-yuan and Tseng Tsan-deng. All of whom are members of the Taiwan Solidarity Union, a political party known for its vehement opposition to any references to the island being a sub component of mainland China .
Currently, when queried using the English word "Taiwan", Google's map software, located at http://maps.Google.com, display the island with the legend "Taiwan, Province of China". Taipei requested that it be altered to read ‘Taiwan’. A minor semantic change, but one which is politically charged.
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We have requested for it to be called 'Taiwan'-- that is the reality"
Michel Lu |
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In light of the current climate between mainland China and Chinese-Taiwan, some have questioned the merit of Taipei's decision to raise the issue with Google, voicing that it is likely to do little more than antagonise Beijing, will provide the Chinese state media with further ammunition that it can use to brand Taipei as a separatist administration.
Questions have also been raised over the choice of Google as the target for a public campaign for recognition, not only because Google is a foreign company, leaving Taipei open to the accusation that it is soliciting foreign support for independence, but also because Google has a history of placing its business interests in China above and beyond its moral duties to any one people or country.
Profit before Morals
While private firms are not usually compelled to honor the 'one China' agreements signed by their respective countries, and a sizeable number do treat China and Chinese Taiwan as being wholly separate entities, it is thought highly unlikely that Google will acquiesce to requests from the island's de facto government because it has strong financial and interests in mainland China that would be jeopardised by a direct recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state.
Like many western technology and communications groups, Google has undertaken a number of ventures in Mainland China in an attempt to capture market share in this expanding, and potentially lucrative, environment. Unfortunately, in order to be allowed to operate in China, Google has had to collaborate substantially with Beijing, and to profits before morals.
Google has a substantial history of collaboration with Beijing that it has extended to a number of areas of its business interests, including the filtering of web searches, the blocking of 'inquisitive' IP addresses, and the filtering of news services.
Currently, Google has tuned its search engine to prevent users from returning pages from a list of banned sites, and to reject searches using certain key words and phrases that Beijing wishes restricted. Similarly, Google China's news service has been specially tuned to reject stories from banned agency and to exclude news results that do not conform to Beijing's ideologies.
Google's search software also has been programmed to 'tag' problem IP addresses, IP addresses of people who make several attempts to search for forbidden material, and to temporarily restrict access to them. Effectively throwing a user off of Google China's system for a given period of time if they try to find something that that Beijing doesn’t want them to find.
In defense of its actions, Google has stated that complying with Beijing is the price of doing business in China, and that if it did not, not only would it be forced out of the Chinese market by full scale government censorship of all Google services, but that its competitors would take its place and censor their own services in the same way that Google now is.
No Harm?
While Google’s spokespeople have voiced that even providing a crippled service to China give some benefits to Chinese users, and 'does no harm' to them, China watchers and anti-censorship groups have voiced in opposition that, by crippling its services, Google is assisting Beijing in giving the impression that certain issues do not exist, that certain events did not happen, and that the reason that users can only find sites that agree with the Chinese government's line on politics, history and social issues is because they are is no descent and no alternative version, with Beijing's version being the only one to exist.
Such a situation has already been recognized as being dangerous by a number of international bodies, including the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, because of its potential to create a single world view among the Chinese people, and to maintain it to an extent that logical and rational individuals are unable to accept ideologies and version of events that differ from those being promulgated by the state, and are unable to make the jump between perceiving an account and questioning it regardless of the facts presented to them to dispute it.
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"Once your mind-set is internalised, you develop this twisted conception of the world, and you select what you want to see to support your understanding," Yu Maochun, Professor, US Naval Academy, Speaking before the USC-ESCR |
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A Price Not Everybody is Willing to Pay
Ironically for Google, which said that it was willing to pay the moral price of compliance in return for access to China's markets, it was recently revealed that Time Warner, then AOL-Time Warner, pulled out of $US50 million agreement to provide AOL services in China, because of demands made on it by Beijing to comply with government policies on censorship and to hand over data that could be used to persecute or convict users who were carrying out activities that would be permissible in the US.
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"[We were concerned about] what we would look like here in the U.S. if we agreed to a governmentally imposed regime where words like democracy had to be blocked'' Richard Parsons, Chief Executive, Time Warner |
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Western Hypocrisy?
Despite Google China's acquiescence to Beijing, in regards censorship, Google American maintains that it is purely an information search tool and that it can neither be held accountable for what a user searches for, nor should it be asked to restrict what they search for. Leading to the perverse situation that, while Google China denies its users the right to search for material about democracy or freedom of speech, Google America allows its users to search for hard core child pornography, material depicting rape, and right-wing websites that advocate racial hatred, on the grounds that prohibiting them from doing so would violate their democratically assured right to freedom of speech.
Is Gmail Safe?
It is not yet known whether Google's Gmail service is being subjected to Chinese censors, but users of any future mainland China specific Gmail services should be advised that it will certainly be subjected to Chinese state demands, including the requirement that Google China hand over any and all personal detail of users in the same way as Yahoo China, which infamously provided IP and content information on the journalist Shi Tao, resulting in him being sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, did.
One China
While Chinese-Taiwan maintains an independent, democratically elected, government and full internal autonomy, its international status is limited by the ‘One China’ principle under which most international governments have agreed to recognise Chinese-Taiwan as being 'an integral component’ of Mainland China and pledged not to have direct a relationship with the island or its administration.
All but 26 world governments, mostly small island states with little or no relationship with mainland China, have sign One China agreements of various wordings, making the island a sovereign state in all but name, and depriving it of standing on international bodies like the WTO and WHO.
Despite its isolation from formal international and diplomatic circles, many world governments, including those both Washington and Tokyo, maintain strong informal ties to Taiwan through 'mutual exchange' bodies that serve as de facto embassies, and most countries maintain separate rules and classifications for mainland China and Chinese-Taiwan in issues of import/export, visa issuance, and international trade.
The Nations and states that currently recognise Chinese-Taiwan are:
- Belize
- Marshall Islands
- Burkina-Faso
- Nauru
- Chad
- Nicaragua
- Costa Rica
- Palau
- Dominican Republic
- Panama
- El Salvador
- Paraguay
- Gambia
- Sao Tome and Principe
- Guatemala
- Senegal
- Haiti
- Solomon Islands
- Holy See
- St Christopher-Nevis
- Honduras
- St Vincent and the Grenadines
- Kiribati
- Swaziland
- Malawi
- Tuvalu
Additionally, Chinese-Taiwan is currently recognized by both the Vatican and by Papal authority, giving it standing with the world's Roman Catholic faithful.
View Comments/Add a Comment (3)
1. angryenglishspeller left...
Thursday, 6 October 2005 6:10 pm
"it is thought highly unlikely that Google will aqueous to requests ..." Do
you mean acquiesce?
2. ACB left...
Thursday, 6 October 2005 6:40 pm
aqueous - water based
acquiesce - to give in to
3. I-Kuan Lin left...
Friday, 7 October 2005 2:29 pm
Thank you for your excellent, informative analysis of the issue.