Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

■"Microsoft Defends Censoring a Dissident's Blog in China," by Kathy Chen and Geoffrey A. Fowler, Wall Street Journal, 6 January 2006, p. A9.

MS shuts down a Chinese blog site because of some postings there that offended Chinese authorities. The culprit was a Chinese journalist writing under a pen name.

MS not talking, but its action is not unusual for IT companies operating overseas: they follow the local content laws as a quid pro quo for establishing the connectivity in the first place.

China's internet users rose from almost nothing in 1998 to roughly 100 million by '05.

This journalist was pushing the limits in ways any democrat would approve, and when his site started drawing 15k hits a day, the authorities pushed MS to pull the plug, which they did.

But more key to me is the incredible growth of blogging in China, AND those bloggers pushing limits, AND getting in trouble AND forcing both governments and corporations to deal with that.

Sure most bloggers in China write about their personal lives rather than politics. But the key thing is 33 million Chinese bloggers and all the learned networking behavior that comes with it.

Of coure, the article quotes the always-solid Rebecca McKinnon on the subject, and she raies the right questions in a balanced way: "In the short term [acquiescing to China] gets you into a market you perhaps couldn't be in otherwise ... [but] in the long term is this good for your corporate global image in China, that you go along with censorship?"

Fair question, someday soon to be debated by ... say ... a couple of hundred million Chinese bloggers?

I say, take the connectivity in the hand over the political freedom in the bush. Eat today and live to blog again tomorrow.

Me? I'm betting on Chinese ingenuity--on both sides--to make this one helluva cat-and-mouse game that the many and the cheap will ultimately win over the far fewer and more expensive.