Google's dramatic martyrdom hides business realities

• Source: Global Times
• [23:20 January 17 2010]
• Comments

By Tian Wei

It is not difficult for Chinese users to say "Google-bye" as long as they still have the World Wide Web.

Which side are you on?

That is the question I have been posed at business luncheons or cocktail parties, ever since Google made its shock announcement.

Everybody has a strong opinion on the topic, except me. Observing at my apparently indifferent attitude, a colleague with an influential Chinese newspaper worriedly said, "This is important. Your views on the issue can show your ultimate ideological tendency. You know?"

Wow! I didn't know at all.

All of a sudden, the Google issue has become an important test!

I barely understand how technology works, yet alone hacking or content control, I am torn between my national identity and dreams for a better world, and, most importantly, I have no knowledge of what is going on behind the scenes.

So I embarrassedly buried myself in history books, trying to enjoy something off -topic, when something caught my eye in a book I had randomly grabbed from the shelf.

It was in 1971, when a couple of "old China hands" were being invited to testify to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

They had advocated before 1949 that the future of China might lie with the Communists, and that the US should engage with them instead of blindly backing Chiang Kai- Shek and the Nationalists.

As a result, however, they had been persecuted, or at least had their loyalty questioned, during the McCarthy era in the 1950s.

In the early 1970s, relations had warmed again between China and the US.

Reflecting on history, the Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Senator J. William Fulbright, sighed and said at the hearing to the China experts that they had "reported honestly about conditions but were persecuted because they were honest."