Far-Ranging Support for Google's China Move

Google's surprising decision this week to abandon cooperation with Chinese government censors — and, possibly, its four-year effort to do business here — is galvanizing an unusually broad coalition of foreigners who hope for a fresh chance to rein in the conduct of an emerging great power.

Most of those forces — from the American right and left, the business and technology communities and human-rights advocacy groups — are united by a belief that their concerns over China's human-rights and free-speech constraints have been buried in a rush to online profit. Some of them have been dismayed by the conciliatory approach toward Beijing taken by the Obama administration, which counts Google's leadership among its most prominent political supporters. Others claim that the problems that prompted Google's stance are symptoms of a serious decline in China's business climate under an increasingly conservative leadership. But it is far from clear that this movement will succeed in prodding either the Chinese government or other companies who still dream of a vast market. Google, which said it would stop cooperating with Chinese censors after uncovering Chinese hackers' efforts to penetrate its computers and steal information on human-rights activists, has officially remained on the sidelines of this movement.