Good Intentions...

The Washington Post’s lead editorial today applauds last week’s speech by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton taking China and several other nations to task for engaging in various forms of Internet censorship within their borders and says Google, Inc., which is threatening to walk away from its Google.cn service in China over censorship obligations and hacking allegations, has found an ally in “the fight for a free Web.”

The editorial goes on to say:

“The U.S. government has been grappling with these challenges for years. But it has not done enough to fight back politically in making Internet freedom an issue in diplomatic and commercial relations and by seeking the international censure of those who violate it. That’s why the speech delivered Thursday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was so important. Ms. Clinton made it admirably clear that abusers such as China will no longer get a free pass in U.S. public diplomacy or in international forums.”

It’s hard to disagree with the hope that threats of U.S. censure will do some good in keeping the Internet unfettered by government censorship, but is it realistic to assume that public scoldings will do much to change the ways of any country’s censors, especially in the case of China, which was ranked in 2009 as the U.S.’s second largest trading partner?

Or whether Secretary Clinton’s speech will do much for Google as it weighs whether to rethink its decision to submit to Chinese censorship rules in the first place?

On the same Post op-ed page today, you can find one good explanation of how deeply the U.S.-China trade relationship goes, including an estimate that perhaps two thirds of China’s $2.4 trillion of foreign exchange reserves are in U.S. dollars, reflecting in part China’s large and ongoing investments in U.S. debt instruments.

Given the depth of the business relationships between the two countries, it’s worth asking how far the U.S. is, and is not, prepared to go to influence China’s Internet policies -- beyond policy speeches -- if push should come to shove. Only time will tell the answer to that question, but if I was Google or a Chinese activist with a hacked gmail account, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting.

JC