Congress Interested in Google's, and Others' Investment in Chinese Censoring

Congress is getting interested in U.S. roles in Chinese censorship.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission is holding an extremely timely hearing on Chinese "Information Control" antics and how it relates to U.S. investment. One angle that Congress is evidently interested in is if U.S. investment in Chinese business is actually playing a role in the state-sponsored censorship rife in the nation. Rebecca MacKinnon, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton has written about the matter on her blog, and it's worth a read because MacKinnon is actually testifying before the Commission today on the matter of Google-rival Baidu's role in censorship, along with U.S. business inputs into censoring acts. One fact MacKinnon highlights is that much of the day-to-day work of censorship has been outsourced to the business sector, and U.S. firms have been "willing to fund Chinese innovation in censorship technologies and systems without complaint or objection." If U.S. policymakers begin to get antsy about whether U.S.-based business are actively contributing to free-speech suppression inside China, who knows what twists the Google-China saga will be forced through next? But of course, it's not just Google's interests at stake here, and business in China is controversial for all sorts of other reasons -- particularly at the moment. Just the other day electronics firm Foxconn, stuck in the middle of a multiple suicide scandal (that may or may not be true), announced that it may be relocating a huge factory inside China to try to resolve the matter. But its highest profile customer, Apple, displayed what some thought as cold feet on this news.