Why Would a Western Company Want to Be in China?

Looking at the events of the last several days involving Google and the Chinese government, anyone with an educated mind would have to sit back and ponder why a big, Western corporation, in the information technology field, would want to do business in China. Of course, we all know about the one billion Chinese consumer market that is always touted for business, but let's take a few moments and really look at who the Chinese government, and military, really are.

One thing we can all agree on, the Chinese do not hide the fact that they censor Internet access to its citizens. Presumably it is to protect them, but all of us know that they want to restrict access to accurate and derogatory information about their leadership. They want to restrict access to what the rest of the world says about them.

Why would that concern Google? Google is a huge worldwide corporation. They wanted to be in China, to have direct access to the people there. They wanted to market their voice and data services to Chinese companies. They wanted to launch their Google Android phone there ( which has been threatened to be delayed or stopped altogether ) and sell to the millions there. They didn't care the Chinese people were being censored, they didn't care that they had to agree to a certain amount of government oversight to set-up shop in the country. Here is why they care: VeriSign security researchers have confirmed that the recent attack on Google's Chinese infrastructure was the work of the Chinese government, or at the very least, agents of said government.

What did the Chinese steal? Some reports coming out of Google claim the attack was targeted at its GMAIL email service, looking for information on Chinese dissidents. Of course, the Chinese claim no knowledge of the incident. The United States State Department has issued official requests for explanations from the Chinese. The corresponding silence from them is deafening.

Back to the original thought at hand though, why would a Western technology company want to form in China? Don't they presume that they will be spied upon? That the traffic originating from their end would be monitored? That the military complex or other agency affiliated with the Chinese would attempt unauthorized access? What about this thought: What if someone well placed within Google's leadership or technology services group were to be abducted in Chine and possibly handed over to Iran or other similarly bad situation perpetrated on one of its employees? We read over the last few days that Google had to place some of its employees on administrative leave because the attack appeared to have some roots as an inside job. How could a Western based company ever trust that when it went into China to establish business, that agents of the Government and spy agencies don't attempt to gain employment to conduct surveillance from the inside out? How in the world could someone do business like that and not constantly have to be on hyper aggressive alert for espionage and other intellectual property crimes? All this author can say about the whole situation is that it's probably time for Google to really take an impact action. either clean house and bring in their own people, their own Internet access that isn't supplied by the Chinese, or quite possibly, just walk away. I believe that walking away will put the Chinese on notice that they cannot simply do as they please without ramifications.

One departing question as we close this article. If it took Google this long about a month) to publicly acknowledge an attack and breach had indeed occurred, how many other Western Companies that exist in China don't yet even know they've been compromised?

,p>Sources

Ryan Paul, Researchers Identify Command Servers behind Google Attack, ars Technica

Michael Liedtke, Google postpones launch of 2 mobile phones in China as fallout from censorship rift widens , Associated Press

Brad Sams, Google attack may have been an inside job , Neowin.com