InformationWeek | Internet In China, freedom of speech | Yahoo Denies Link To Jailing Of Third Chinese Activist | April 19, 2006 — One of the founders of Yahoo is Taiwan-born Jerry Yang. There is no way any of this could be true and I assume this is part of some sort of smear campaign.
Reporters Without Borders, an international group dedicated to freedom of the press, said on Wednesday that Yahoo Inc. helped Chinese authorities in jailing a pro-democracy activist, the third dissident sent to prison on information gathered from the Internet portal.
In linking Yahoo to the jailing of Jiang Lijun, the advocacy group called on the Sunnyvale, Calif., company to remove its email servers from China. Information gathered from Yahoo Web mail was used to convict Jiang, the organization said.
“It is the only way to avoid taking part in the current crackdown against journalists and democrats,” the Paris-based group said.
Well, Yahoo! stands to lose alot from being barred from China. China’s a big market for the search engines with millions ofn internet users. Even though Jerry Yang’s tai-wan born, he’ll probably do anything forn his company to in this major market.
While this may be a smear campaign, the fact that one of the Yahoo founders is from Taiwan lends no credibility to that theory. Most Taiwanese are starting to embrace the mainland though they are still quite wary of it as the treatment that China has given to HK hasn’t been that good. The feelings of cultural pride are strong among those of Chinese ancestry (the whole we’ve been together over 3000 years thing) The hardlined dictatorship of Kai-shek and those in the KMD had their time in power (it ran it’s course and it’s done), but within 50 years Taiwan will go the way of HK willingly out of the apathy and forgetfulness of youth as well as the want to be whole. That digression aside, it would be a small price to pay (and continue to pay) to stay in what will be the largest market in the coming years.
Oh, and here is a quote from Yang that shows how little he cares:
“To be doing business in China, or anywhere else in the world, we have to comply with local law.” – Jerry Yang
Grouchy/defensive because you have Yahoo stock? Yeah, I would be too.
YOU guys are more cynical than me..
IYou’re both wrong too. But hey.
Maybe we’re wrong, but I’ve left room for myself to be because I don’t know which it is. I was merely making a small case for the contrary without going into further detail so that the small case would get posted (as I’ve recently learned, this is not the place to make cases with extended documented evidence as stated in the guidelines). It will be interesting to see how the perceptually infallible Google will deal with the Chinese government over time. Kind of hard to hold to your IPO slogan when you turn over evidence to assist in the conviction and unjust imprisonment of those seeking democracy. We’ll see how that works out for them when the Reds come knockin’.
A slightly deeper analysis of this situation:
Corporations these days operate with a simple formula which when applied to this situation is this: Is the PR blowback from this going to defile the company image (effect the stock trading volume and value) more than the degree it will hamper the future perceived profits from China? Answer: No it won’t. Investors (and those they invest for) have no sense of morality, they only see immediate profit. Generational tyranny anyone?
So they deny imprisoning the third guy, does this mean that are acknowledging they imprisoned the first two?
I didn’t see a denial. I saw a cop out plea by Yahoo. We just obey local laws. Yeah, sure.
Skype is reporting to the Chinese authorities too.
I don’t like this. It sucks. Unfortunately, the law is the law. We don’t castigate American companies for reporting illegal activities. In fact, we condemn them for aiding illegal behavior.