Last week it emerged that Apple has followed in the footsteps of Google in ‘following the locals laws’ of countries in which they operate. In this instance they mean removing all Dalai Lama themed apps from its Chinese app store (the Dalai Lama is classed as a dangerous dissident in China – and is therefore removed from all online media). On the face of it, Apple’s decision is hardly surprising from a company which knows (as does any other operating in this territory) that this is the cost of business in this market. Unfortunately it will certainly continue to be so while companies acquiesce to participating in the apparatus of control that is censorship in China.
Is it too much to expect a company to refuse to operate in such a market? As China controversially executes a Briton found guilty of smuggling heroin in the region this week (who will be just one of the many thousand executed this year in the country which averages somewhere between 1,700 and 10,000 executions a year, but will not release any official info on the subject), maybe it’s time to raise the possibility of corporate refusal of China’s rules of play.
After all, it can hardly be denied that in adhering to such laws, Google and Apple surely strengthen the position of power occupied by the gov’t. The problem is unfortunately rather complex for three reasons:
1. The ‘If we don’t do it, someone else will’ rationale
2. The all-trumping quest for bigger profits
3. The difficulty in knowing where to draw the line…
The problem with the first reason is that this logic simply represents an excuse, since if Apple and Google publicly refused to do business under such conditions, their high-profile status would ensure China’s international image would be damaged to a significant degree, which is not something that would be borne lightly. The potential to re-negotiate laws might arise, or maybe it wouldn’t; but either way we’ll never know since this wasn’t even considered.
The second point needs no elaboration – placing profits above any and every other consideration is part of a reckless process that today sees corporate guilt unmistakeable in leaving millions out of work or facing eviction and uncertainty, just in the UK alone, as a result of the global banking crisis (itself hardly the first instance of such corporate irresponsibility and crime).
The third is perhaps the toughest, especially when you consider that some degree of censorship exists in many countries of the world – and even that capital punishment is not solely a Chinese instrument, but features also in many other countries (though it is estimated that seven of every ten people executed each year are killed in China). In a way though, this debate is mercifully almost irrelevant in the specific case of China – since wherever the line is drawn, it should surely stop short of assisting in the Chinese government’s censorship apparatus…
I don’t quite know why I somehow expected more from these tech companies than from the likes of others also active in China, such as Nike or MacDonalds. I think it must be something to do with the progressive image these companies try to project – and also the fact that by and large they are relatively separate from the extremes of exploitation associated with Nike sweatshops or other such aspects. Maybe it’s the well-publicised working conditions offered by Google or Apple that made me think they genuinely were different from all the dirtiness of the Capitalism’s darkest facets… Sadly not it seems, for it is far easier to simply take a Dalai Lama app off the online store and not think about why it should be so or what it means in a wider sense for the people who live in that country, than to enter into those tricky ethical issues…
Dejan Levi