What Chinatown tells us about the Google controversy

In light of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s big Internet freedom speech this AM, I thought it would be a good idea to get a handle on how China is playing this whole Google controversy.    Well, according to the New York Times, it appears that China is downplaying l’affaire Google as a minor matter about business regulation: The ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

In light of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's big Internet freedom speech this AM, I thought it would be a good idea to get a handle on how China is playing this whole Google controversy.   

In light of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s big Internet freedom speech this AM, I thought it would be a good idea to get a handle on how China is playing this whole Google controversy.   

Well, according to the New York Times, it appears that China is downplaying l’affaire Google as a minor matter about business regulation:

The Chinese government is taking a cautious approach to the dispute with Google, treating the conflict as a business dispute that requires commercial negotiations and not a political matter that could affect relations with the United States.

Officials were caught off guard by Google’s move, and they want to avoid the issue’s becoming a referendum among Chinese liberals and foreign companies on the Chinese government’s Internet censorship policies, say people who have spoken to officials here. There have been no public attacks on Google from senior officials or formal editorials in the newspaper People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s mouthpiece.

Well, that settles that, I guess…. zzzz…. wait, what’s with this Financial Times article by Kathrin Hille I’m seeing?

China has signalled a change of approach to the Google crisis, with state media describing the company’s threat to pull out of the country as a political conspiracy by the US government.

Accusations in two newspapers that Washington was using Google as a foreign policy tool were echoed by Chinese government officials on Wednesday….

Global Times, a nationalist tabloid owned by People’s Daily, the Communist party mouthpiece, ran an editorial with the headline: “The world does not welcome the White House’s Google”.

“Whenever the US government demands it, Google can easily become a convenient tool for promoting the US government’s political will and values abroad. And actually the US government is willing to do so,” the piece said.

In an accompanying news story, the paper quoted Wu Xinbo, a political scientist at Fudan University, as saying “the Google incident is not just a commercial incident, it is a political incident”.

NOOO… cognitive complexity!! Run away!! Run away!!!

Actually, it’s not that complex.  Indeed, this climactic clip from Chinatown (oh, the irony) addresses this question metaphorically, without the yucky incest factor. This is a public and a private sector dispute. Marc Ambinder’s useful tock-tock on events from the U.S. side of things make this clear enough (also, check out this webcast featuring FP‘s own Evgeny Morozov, as well as this FAQ on the controversy).

The interesting question is what will happen over time. Usually, public-private disputes don’t stay that way — they go for "corner solutions." Either the private sector finds an accommodation with the host government (access to Japanese markets, for example), or the business controversy gets subsumed by high politics (Dubai Ports World).

Question to readers: which way do you think the Google-China feud will go?

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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