Morgan Stanley estimated that there were around 94 million Chinese Internet users at the end of 2004, making China second only to the United States in total numbers of Internet users. The Chinese government has struggled to hide its citizens from a world of instant messaging, blogging, and e-mailing that entails the free global exchange of ideas. For the government, help has come from an unlikely source: Western software and technology firms have stepped up to aid the government in bringing the Internet to China at the expense of personal liberties and free speech. By choosing to aid the Chinese government in hindering free speech and the rights of Chinese citizens, Western computer companies have missed the opportunity to bring great advances to the oppressed Chinese people.

Companies such as Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, and Cisco have been vital in the spread of the Internet in China. They have assisted the Chinese government in writing software programs and have provided the basic infrastructure for the expansion of the Internet. Unfortunately, with the help of Western computer companies, the Chinese government has filtered the Internet so that citizens have access only to websites and blogs that either speak highly of communism or do not address politics at all. According to the Berkeley China Internet Project, a program designed to monitor the emergence of the Internet in China, the Chinese government hides websites that contain certain phrases thought to be unfriendly toward its rule, such as freedom, democracy, China-liberal, and falun, a word that refers to the dissident spiritual sect known as the Falun Gong.

The emergence and rapid spread of blogging have posed an even greater challenge to the Chinese government, forcing Beijing to enlist the assistance of Western corporations further in order to smother such a movement. Internet blogs are numerous and hard to track due to their temporary and elusive nature. In the summer of 2005, Microsoft helped to launch MSN Spaces, a blog service that Microsoft filtered in order to eliminate the use of blogs as a medium for political debate and dissent. Bloggers are forbidden to use words considered distasteful by the Chinese government. Any use of such words results in a harsh message: “This topic contains forbidden words. Please delete them.”

Possibly the most controversial decision by a US Internet company working in China was Yahoo’s decision to turn over personal information to the Chinese government, which led to the imprisonment of a Chinese dissident. In November 2004, the Chinese government arrested Chinese writer and journalist Shi Tao on charges of illegally revealing state secrets abroad using a Yahoo e-mail account. He had e-mailed copies of a letter that related a Chinese government order regarding how Chinese journalists were to handle the fifteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacres. After discovering Shi Tao’s actions, the Chinese government confronted Yahoo’s regional office in Hong Kong in order to obtain the IP address of the “mysterious dissenter.” Yahoo cooperated, under intense pressure from the Chinese government, resulting in a 10-year prison sentence for Shi Tao.

By helping the Chinese government suppress free speech, Yahoo and several other US software companies have drawn harsh criticism from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Reporters Without Borders, a French organization that monitors freedom of the press. The companies responded by saying that their actions within China were imperative in order to show respect for the Chinese government and its laws.

The spread of the Internet in China poses challenges for people who wish for new freedoms and for those in the government who wish to maintain control over information. However, technology firms that shape Internet development play a vital role in determining the outcome of the struggle. The increase in Internet use in China leaves Western software companies in a dilemma: they wish to establish a foothold in the world’s most promising economic market but must pacify an oppressive government.

At the same time, this quandary gives the companies a unique opportunity, because they possess technologies that the Chinese government currently wants. Companies can use this dependency as leverage to negotiate what freedoms will be withheld from the Chinese people. While cooperation with the Chinese government may appear to be the easiest way to gain entrance into the Chinese market, Western firms must remember that such actions undermine the purpose of their existence: to provide people with the benefits of modern technology. An approach to business that bears such systems in mind would allow Western companies to continue providing services to the Chinese government, but only under the assurance that such services will be used to expand opportunities for the Chinese people.