“Mr. Semel and the company he leads [Yahoo! Inc.] is a beneficiary, as we all are, of this great experiment in self-governance, free enterprise and individual liberty that we call America. When faced with a choice between the bottom line, and betraying the very tenets that underpin this nation, Yahoo chose profit. They should be ashamed.”

This blustering statement was issued by US Congressman Frank Wolf this past week in reference to Yahoo. Information has recently been released that, in 2004, the internet search giant voluntarily provided the Chinese government with critical information leading to the arrest and imprisonment of Shi Tao, a journalist who had used a Yahoo e-mail account to leak a sensitive story to foreign media. This type of rhetoric has become increasingly common on Capitol Hill as increasing news about American high-tech companies’ acquiescing to demands from the Chinese government comes to light.

Implicated are Silicon Valley giants Cisco Systems, Yahoo, Google, and the software behemoth Microsoft, who recently appeared before the House International Relations Committee investigating their role in helping the Chinese government by suppressing free speech on the Internet and willfully turning over demanded data and records. Each of these companies’ misdeeds was slightly different. Cisco Systems was chastised for selling networking equipment to the Chinese police, which has enabled them to create – what is believed to be – the world’s most advanced government filtering system. Microsoft was reprimanded for taking down certain ‘dissident’ blogs and prohibiting other blogs from including words like “democracy” and “Tiananmen Square.” “Don't be evil” Google was castigated for setting up a Chinese search engine that filtered out Web sites that the government wanted blocked. Congressman Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the committee compared these companies’ actions to IBM’s legal sales of computer equipment to the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Although the US government is accusing these companies of aiding a repressive regime, Congress seems to be talking out of both sides of its mouth. The Commerce Department, under the Export Administration Act, bans the sale of crime control technology to repressive regimes, but Internet hardware or software have never been classified under this category. The US government, including the legislative and executive branch, claim that US high-tech companies should not be involved in the Chinese market, because they are helping or, at the very least, going along with the suppression of human freedoms. But by this reasoning, no American company should deal with China, because they are in someway aiding the Chinese economy or government, promoting the status quo. If you use such a hard-line non-consequential moral system, the US should not even associate with China, because that makes the US an accomplice to repression and tyranny.

Reality, on the other hand, is full of grays, fuzzy lines, and fuzzy math. The US government and companies have to decide how much they are willing to comply with the Chinese government. It is both unrealistic and unwise for the US to completely pull out of China. A utilitarian society and government should realize that it would be economically devastating to pull out of the fastest growing and soon to be largest economy. Also we cannot ignore every country that disagrees with our views of free speech. For example, Austria, a very solid ally, recently sentenced a British historian to 3 years in prison for denying the Holocaust. If the US were truly so unforgiving about repression of human rights there would be reasons not to associate with almost every country; perhaps we would not even be able to accept our own current practices.

So what is the line that should be drawn? What should US companies be allowed to do in other countries? How much should they comply with Chinese demands? I believe Yahoo and Cisco Systems deserve to be censured. American companies should not directly aid Chinese officials in tracking individuals, but they can make concessions and censor content. This is justifiable because even when companies like Google and Microsoft limit the content available, they are not under the full control of the Chinese government like a comparable local competitor, such as the search engine Baidu.com. They are not actively assisting in repressive policing. Google discloses to its Chinese users when a certain topic is censored due to the “government’s laws, regulations and policies.” Additionally, foreign companies are given more room to test the Chinese government’s patience by only censoring topics, when they are specifically ordered, as compared to the expectation of domestic companies to self-censor.

High-tech companies have dealt some major blows to China’s repression of free speech. One example is Li Datong, a former editor of Freezing Point, an often controversial insert in the China Youth Daily, and his internal memo blasting the propaganda office for trying to dictate the stories that were published in the newspaper. His memo, which was initially posted on the newspaper’s computer network, was forwarded across the internet through blogs, instant messenger, and email. Because of the huge amount of exposure the memo received, the Chinese government reversed its policies that the memo condemned. Banning all high-tech companies would severely reduce people’s abilities to get around the Chinese filtering system. Despite their short-term actions, the presence of Western companies in China is a long-term asset to continuing process of liberalization in the country.

China can survive without US companies, high-tech or low-tech; placing an embargo on Cuba, North Korea, or Iraq did not change any of their policies, China being much stronger economically, would be even less affected. Certain high-tech companies should be allowed to operate in China, only if their actions do not directly help Chinese officials persecute dissidents. Completely banning companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, from China would only reduce its people’s access to information and promote a rift between the US and China.

In the past year, there seems to be an upward trend of public criticism of censorship and the Chinese government in general. Earlier this month, a joint letter was released from newspaper editors and former party members, including the former Secretary of Mao Zedong, condemning President Hu Jintao’s increased censorship. Hopefully, high-tech companies’ continued presence in China will give the Chinese people a taste of having freer flowing information, which will compel them to demand more and slowly break down the Great Firewall of China.