WASHINGTON—Representatives from Google and The Go Daddy Group spoke of the increasing difficulties in doing business in China without becoming complicit in its censorship on the Internet and monitoring of its citizens’ free expressions on the Internet.
They spoke at the hearing by the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) on March 24 to examine developments in the last couple of months regarding China’s censorship of the Internet.
Google announced that it will no longer filter searches in China, and is redirecting its China searches through its Hong Kong site. At this hearing, Go Daddy, the world’s largest domain name register, announced it would “discontinue offering new .CN domain names at this time.”
The reason given for this decision is that the Chinese entity that authorizes Go Daddy in China, China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC), expanded its requirements last December for domain registration, including color headshot photos, Chinese business registration number and signed registration forms of registrants who are Chinese nationals.
In addition, the new requirements are to be retroactively applied to registrants Go Daddy had previously registered, sometimes years before. Apparently, Chinese authorities want to increase control over content of domain name registrations by Chinese citizens.
“We are concerned for the security of the individuals affected by CNNIC’s new requirements, as well as for the chilling effect we believe the requirements will have on new .CN domain name registrations,” said Christine Jones, Executive Vice-President and General Counsel for the Go Daddy Group, Inc. She said that only 20 percent of their affected customers provided the required documentation for Go Daddy to submit to the CNNIC.
Google representative Alan Davidson, Director of Public Policy, said, “The Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement.” The company was never completely comfortable with China’s requirements as indicated by the fact that Google was “the first search engine in China to let users know when the results had been removed to comply with Chinese law,” said Davidson.
However, the limitations on free speech in China increased last year making it difficult for Google to continue. Davidson observed that numerous sites have been blocked in China, including YouTube, The Guardian, Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and Wikipedia.
Davidson referred to the “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating in China.” Independently of those attacks was the targeting of Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China. Both attacks were the topic of Google’s January 12th news conference.
The CECC invited the Chinese Embassy to provide a representative at the hearing. They declined to send anyone but for the first time provided a written statement which was entered into the hearing record. It said the Chinese met twice with Google representatives and responded “with great patience” to the questions raised by Google. Their statement said, “China still welcomes Google’s operation and development in China provided that it abides by Chinese laws.”
The CECC maintains a political prisoner database for China of 1,000 entries; profiles of ten of these prisoners convicted for their postings on the Internet were distributed at the hearing. For instance, Huang Qi was sentenced to three years for investigating the Sichuan earth quake zone, writing about the collapsed schools and posting parents’ appeals on his Web site. His crime was “illegal possession of state secrets.”
Last November, Tibetan Buddhist Konchong Tsephel was sentenced 15 years. While he was formally convicted for “disclosing state secrets,” the real reason appears to be promoting Tibetan culture on his Tibetan language Web site.
Getting the State Department’s Attention
Representatives from human rights organizations spoke of the need for U.S. companies and the U.S. Government to be cognizant of the communist regime’s Internet surveillance and suppression and not to be intimidated and do nothing to counter it.
