Fergie's Tech Blog

China steps up Web controls but investors untroubled

A Reuters newswire article by Lindsay Black, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

China's cyber police have intensified controls over the country's 100 million Internet users in the past few months but that hasn't stopped Western Web firms from pushing ever farther into the booming market.

Rather than using their clout to help push the boundaries of free speech and information in the one-party state, critics say companies like Google, Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are at best turning a blind eye to the machinations of the cyber police.

"It's too early to say that just by doing business in China and developing the Internet in China they will foster democracy and human rights," said Julien Pain, of media watchdog Reporters Without Borders.

"It doesn't work that way."

Indeed, the group says there is evidence the opposite is happening, with the major Web players accused in the past of pre-empting the government by routinely blocking discussions on sensitive subjects from the 1989 democracy movement to the spiritual group Falun Gong.

posted by Fergie @ 9/23/2005 01:41:00 PM