Clash of Civilisations Over Bitter Bytes of Data

By Tom Plate

19 January 2010 Prelude to World War Three? Not exactly — that’d be a rather spectacular example of journalistic inflammation at its worst.

So let’s put Google’s spat with China in perspective. Considering the gigantic size and enormous global footprint of the US and China, the areas of genuine major conflict between them are relatively small. Yes, you have the tensions over Taiwan and Tibet, which may well drag on forever. And then you have the roiling quarrel over China’s currency subsidies, which impact trade-
friction issues.

Enter now, though, a more pressing problem that has been looming for some time — and now has hit the international-relations fan big-time. Call it a “clash of civilisations” between the Chinese civilisation and the American one — with nary a fiery Muslim cleric or bomb-toting terrorist in sight.


At issue is a conception of information that is distinctly and honestly American, versus one that is distinctly and honestly Chinese. In the former, information is ordinarily viewed like the air we breathe: accessible to all and rarely dangerous. In the latter, information is viewed as potential gas warfare: dangerous unless controlled and subject to severe state quarantine.

And so when those geniuses (non-sarcastic here) at Empire Google discovered to a technical certainty that Empire China had cracked into clients’ email accounts in its China network operation, it cried foul. This ultra-successful Silicon Valley giant is about information-Googling, not Gulag-ing. So it raised the possibility of withdrawing its business from China entirely if such raids continue (and/or, if market share continues to erode).

For all appearances, the general targets of the hacking appear to be email user-clients whom Chinese authorities suspect of anti-government attitudes, or even activism. Beijing doesn’t like to tolerate anti-state activity of any kind; Google doesn’t like being associated with intellectual suppression triggered by information access.

For both parties, a prudent measure of caution is urgently advised, because neither has much room to maneuver. Google has planted its flag dramatically on the side of informational freedom and client confidentiality and for that, it is being widely and rightly applauded, even by many people within China. That’s why Beijing doesn’t have much room to manoeuvre. It is absolutely true that many on the mainland genuinely respect the national government for its sagacious guidance of the economy to unprecedented heights of wealth, especially after such dreary decades of economic dysfunction. But they do not want to live in an informational Dark Age, and would much rather twitter, blog and splash around in the warm and refreshing ocean of our informational age, just like almost everyone else.

Chinese authorities, precisely because they are well aware of the immense undercurrent of domestic debate and internal criticism, will not budge on the issue of control. That’s why they slapped an 11-year jail sentence on human-rights activist Liu Xiaobo. In no uncertain terms, they aim to warn everyone that they will sit on the lid on dissent for fear of everything boiling over.

In this respect, at least, China is further away from California than Mars; and Google is a particularly Californian media giant. By that we mean that it is (1) relatively young and new, and (b) youthfully idealistic. It proffers a most counter-establishment corporate motto: “Don’t Be Evil’. I love it. It is meant to suggest that huge corporate profits can be made without committing huge capitalistic sins (exploiting labour, eviscerating the environment, 
supporting dictators).

It’s a lovely thought. But the enormous potential for naivete is about to be tested. China is not about to appreciably back down because its authorities fear political chaos (see M. Gorbachev, Soviet Union, decade of ‘80s). From its perspective, political implosion on the mainland would be evil-incarnate.

So Google will have to decide if it can tolerate trying to make profits in a country that will steal from client and proprietary accounts whatever it wants and whenever it thinks it’s necessary.

The task for Google is to recognise that sometimes the definition of evil is culturally and politically relative (executives: Just Google this idea up!). The task for Beijing is to recognise that sometimes its political stability would be enhanced, not undermined, by the occasional light touch on the political controls. Even so, the issues are real and profound. Yet it is the American (indeed, Californian) optimist in me that says the two sides need to grow up together and work this out. The world does not need a burgeoning US-Chinese clash of civilisations. Google should stay in China if it can but leave if it must. It will lose the business but keep to its true self. There is a time to remain silent, and a time to stand up. China may need to do what it has to do, and it needs to preserve face. But an American company has every right to stand up and say: Fine, but this is not for us, though it must not crow about it. China has its own ways. We have ours. How can we live better together?

Author and syndicated columnist Tom Plate is a member of a number of international-relations organisations, including the Pacific Century Institute and the Los Angeles World Affairs Council

Originally published January 19, 2010 in the Khaleej Times.