Washington: Lawmakers in the US Congress on Wednesday accused US Internet providers of putting the quest for profits ahead of ethics in cooperating with China's censorship of online information.
The stinging criticism came at a hearing in the House of Representatives, where senior officials from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Cisco Systems were the star witnesses.
Many lawmakers, like Republican Representative Tom Tancredo, said there could be no excuse for American Internet and high-tech companies yielding to China's censorship restrictions.
"Our companies cowardly complicity in restricting speech is a disservice to freedom-loving Chinese and a dishonor to America," Tancredo said at the hearing.
Representative Chris Smith, Republican chairman of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations, which sponsored the hearing, accused US Internet companies of engaging in "sickening collaboration" with China, which had resulted in "decapitating the voice of the dissidents" in the Asian giant.
Smith recalled how Yahoo!s cooperation with Chinese police last year led to the arrest of cyber-dissident Shi Tao, and two years earlier to that of another Internet user, Li Zhi, who was sentenced to eight years in prison after making critical remarks about the government in online discussion groups.
"Women and men are going to the gulag and being tortured as a direct result of information handed over to Chinese officials," Smith said.
Lawmakers added that China's vast and lucrative market, with 110 million Internet users now and many millions more expected, has prompted US companies to put ethical considerations to the side in adhering to Beijing's restrictive rules.
But US Internet providers defended their cooperation with the Chinese government, saying that restricted online access, while less than ideal, is still of great benefit to the vast majority of people in China.
They said that Internet companies chafe under the restrictions imposed by Beijing.
"We all face the same struggle between American values and the laws we must obey," said Michael Callahan, general counsel for Yahoo, echoing the positions of other Internet executives appearing with him before a congressional panel probing the human rights implications of their compliance with Chinese authorities.
"Failure to comply in China could have subjected Yahoo China and its employees to criminal charges including imprisonment," Callahan told the lawmakers.
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"Ultimately US companies in China face a choice -- comply with Chinese law or leave," Callahan said.
The Yahoo executive noted the "severe challenges for any company operating in China, particularly for those in the Internet, media or telecommunications industries."
But he said a worst-case scenario would be if the providers were forced to leave. "We believe information is power. We believe the Internet is a positive force in China," he said.
Elliot Schrage, vice president for global communications at Internet behemoth Google, said a Chinese language search engine specially designed for that country's market -- Google.cn -- was a pragmatic solution to the challenges of Chinese censorship, meeting the guidelines set by the government but also fulfilling most of the demands of Chinese Internet users.
Schrage told the panel that his company's acquiescence to Chinese rules "was based on a judgment that Google.cn will make a meaningful -- though imperfect -- contribution to the overall expansion of access to information in China."
The service, he continued, provides "more and better search results for all but a handful of politically sensitive subjects."
US officials at the same hearing expressed concern about Chinese censorship. New regulations "provide the legal means to censor a very broad spectrum of free legitimate speech, and their scope causes great concern," said David Gross of the US State Department.
He said the US government shares with US businesses the goal of "establishing the free flow of information in China by using the Internet and other means, and we will continue to consult with industry closely," he said.
"The new Chinese regulations run counter to the commitments China itself has made to the world community," said Gross, the State Department's coordinator for international communications and information policy.
"While censorship appears to be incomplete, the vast monitoring effort conducted by Chinese authorities means that users can never be sure whether their legitimate searches for information will be met with intimidation or worse," he said.
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