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Google: a new approach to ChinaGoogle: a new approach to ChinaPosted Jan 13, 2010 4:46 UTC (Wed) by jamesmrh (guest, #31622)Parent article: Google: a new approach to China
Currently, they are still censoring search results:
http://www.google.cn/search?hl=zh-CN&q=tiananmen+square
At the bottom of the page, there's a message in Chinese which google translates as:
"According to local laws, regulations and policies, some search results are not shown."
I'm glad Google seem to have realized what they're doing, but why did it take so long?
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Google: a new approach to China Posted Jan 13, 2010 5:26 UTC (Wed) by ncm (subscriber, #165) [Link]
It's a public company. They risk being sued if they are seen abandoning profits. China could easily buy a big chunk of it, maybe a controlling chunk. Wouldn't that be fun?
Google: a new approach to China Posted Jan 13, 2010 5:39 UTC (Wed) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link] Such a suit would be unlikely to be successful. Even if Google couldn't get it thrown out, they could insist on a jury trial, where the plaintiffs could do their best to get an American jury to rule that Google must submit to Chinese Communist censorship to make a few more bucks, while Google's lawyers engage in not-so-subtle red-baiting.
Google: a new approach to China Posted Jan 13, 2010 8:23 UTC (Wed) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]
Please. PRC has never been communist in a Marxist sense and hasn't even been communist
according to the odd Maoist model since the mid 80s when the "socialism with chinese characteristics" (i.e., capitalism under control of the bureaucracy) was implemented by Deng Xiaoping at the head of a bunch of political pragmatists. Trotsky predicted in the late 1920s that if the degenerated workers state system of the Soviet Union was not reversed (and it was not) it was only a matter of a generation or two before the nomenclatura (bureaucracy) determined that a more effective and profitable way to exploit the working class was to make peace with the international bourgeoisie. And so it happened in China as well, though with different twists and turns.
The Chinese system is authoritarian. That is an entirely different axis to left vs. right. The
Google: a new approach to China Posted Jan 13, 2010 9:29 UTC (Wed) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]
For any single communist country you can name, there will be those who pop up and say 'but country X is/was not communist in the true sense of the word...'
Yes, and you could even strengthen that statement Posted Jan 13, 2010 9:45 UTC (Wed) by edmundo (guest, #616) [Link]
For example, I think it is probably true that most people who freely and willingly call themselves communists (so this excludes people living under an authoritarian regime that calls itself "communist") would say that there has never been a communist country. I met a communist who said that the closest there has been to a communist country is Sweden.
There's always someone who says that East Germany was by definition communist because it called itself communist, but East Germany also officially called itself democratic ...
Yes, and you could even strengthen that statement Posted Jan 13, 2010 10:24 UTC (Wed) by fandom (subscriber, #4028) [Link]
Here in Spain communists starting saying 'well, but they weren't real
communist countries' after Berlin's wall had fallen, up until then those countries were shining examples of what we should be.
And of course, they are still praising Cuba's regime every chance they
Yes, and you could even strengthen that statement Posted Jan 15, 2010 21:15 UTC (Fri) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]
For the record, Trotskyists have said consistently since the early 1930s that the
only communist implementation was the Soviet Union, and then only until 1926 when it devolved into a deformed workers state where the bureaucracy had seized the power properly taken up by the working class. They (we, because I'm a Trotskyist) critiqued the Soviet satellite states, and continue to critique Cuba, Venezuela, China, and other states dominated by opportunist thinking and cults of personality.
So no, not all "communists" held up Eastern Europe as shining examples. And Trotskyists
Google: a new approach to China Posted Jan 13, 2010 18:56 UTC (Wed) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link]
Many people say some thing similar when you point out how unregulated capitalism can cause problems as well.
Google: a new approach to China Posted Jan 18, 2010 21:44 UTC (Mon) by mikov (subscriber, #33179) [Link]
This discussion is ridiculous. None of the former socialist countries claimed they were communist. They were officially "working towards achieving communism", but even then and there communism was viewed as an utopia.
For example, it was commonly believed that there would be no need for money in communism (hello, Star Trek!). Nobody, and I mean, nobody even the official party, thought or said that communism had been achieved.
The label "communist countries" is inaccurate at best, and can be offensive to people who consider themselves communists. It is similar to calling China and Cuba "democratic countries".
Google: a new approach to China Posted Jan 13, 2010 12:54 UTC (Wed) by dunlapg (subscriber, #57764) [Link] It's certainly true that the whole free-speech thing is more about government control than about "true" communism. However, I was under the impression that Marx pretty much agreed with Plato, that control of public discourse (aka censorship and propaganda) was a duty of the state (for everyone's own good, of course). If that's so, then although the current authoritarian regimes may or may not be "Marxist", any Marxist regime would be authoritarian.
Google: a new approach to China Posted Jan 13, 2010 14:10 UTC (Wed) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link]
Karl Marx was a crack-smoking idiot.
Marx Posted Jan 13, 2010 14:38 UTC (Wed) by danielpf (subscriber, #4723) [Link]
Are you sure an idiot could write thick books convincing intellectuals and millions of people in many countries to start revolutions?
Marx Posted Jan 13, 2010 14:41 UTC (Wed) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] This sort of thing is even more off the LWN topic than the original post was...and I know that, from experience, discussions along these lines tend not to prove helpful for LWN readers. Maybe it would be a good idea to cut this conversation short?
Marx Posted Jan 13, 2010 17:16 UTC (Wed) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]
It wouldn't be the first time. See also: religion.
Google: a new approach to China Posted Jan 13, 2010 10:27 UTC (Wed) by __alex (subscriber, #38036) [Link]
Unsubstantiated rumor coming out of the Wikileaks twitter account atm suggests that the real
reason Google are upset is due to the CPC infiltrating the Shanghai office and trying to poke around their repositories.
That effectively makes withdrawal from China a damage limitation exercise rather than 'abandoning
Google might not be perfect but they definitely aren't stupid and you can bet that this was a very
Google: a new approach to China Posted Jan 13, 2010 16:51 UTC (Wed) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]
A suit by stockholders claiming that Google is abandoning short-term profits in favor of maintaining their reputation would be laughed out of court, because Google's prospectus states that they will abandon short-term profits in favor of maintaining their reputation. A public company doesn't have to maximize its stockholder returns; it has to do what its prospectus says it will do. Normally, prospectuses say that they'll maximize investor returns, because that is generally considered attractive to investors, but Google stated up front that their strategy involved leaving money on the table if they feel taking it would not be the right thing for the company.
On the other hand, if Google seemed to be abandoning its morals, stockholders could sue on that basis. Of course, it would be a kind of pointless suit, since they couldn't really ask for anything that the court could give them, unless the long-term returns suffer from a revelation of immoral activities.
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