Yahoo! in China
James 5 December 2007, 10:40AM
Written by Leo Tallay
Yahoo! was the first major foreign internet company to enter the Chinese market in 1999. Three years later, Yahoo! voluntarily signed the Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industryђ, in effect aligning itself with the Chinese governments approach to suppressing dissent when it was under no legal obligation to do so, and damaging its own credibility in the process. Yahoo!Ғs behaviour in China clearly contradicts the set of core values it has established for itself, as it claims that since its foundation in 1995:
Yahoo! has been guided by beliefs closely held by our founders and sustained by our employees: we believe the Internet is built on openness, from information access to creative expression. We are committed to providing individuals with easy access to information and opportunities to openly communicate and exchange views and opinions.
From the beginning of its operations in China, Yahoo! has censored the Chinese version of its search engine, cn.yahoo.com, and it continued to do so after signing the pledge. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) found in 2006 that Yahoo! was the worst offender in censorship tests the organisation carried out on Chinese versions of Internet search engines Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft MSN, as well as their local competitor Baidu. In tests using "subversive" key words such as '6-4' (June 4, the date of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre), or 'Tibet independence', RSF found Yahoo! was censoring more than even Baidu, using a variety of techniques: returning pro-government results, displaying an error message or actually blocking all searches for up to an hour until the search tool could be used again.
Ten years in prison for sending an email
Also disturbing are revelations that user data handed over by Yahoo! to Chinese law enforcement officials has assisted in the arrest and conviction of at least four people who used email accounts from the cn.mail.yahoo.com. service. Among these cases is that of Shi Tao, a journalist sentenced to ten years in jail in April 2005 for "divulging state secrets abroad". Court documents obtained by the Dui Hua Foundation, a human-rights non-governmental organisation, and RSF found that Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd provided information to the Chinese authorities regarding an internet protocol (IP) address linking Shi Tao to material posted on a U.S.-based dissident website. Internet writers Li Zhi, Jiang Lijun and Wang Xiaoning were all sentenced in 2003 to between four and ten years in prison for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression a right entrenched in international law and the Chinese constitution. In those three cases too, Yahoo! provided private email information to investigators and prosecutors.
China's vaguely-worded legal definition of what constitutes a 'state secret' gives authorities broad discretion to detain people who peacefully exercise their right to free expression. This is despite of the fact that China has signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), meaning it intends to be bound by the spirit of the ICCPR pending ratification, which includes the right to free speech. That China has signed this covenant should be reason enough for Yahoo! to refrain from actively aiding Chinese authorities, based on its usual defence, as given to the BBC in September 2005, that "Yahoo! must ensure that its local country sites must operate within the laws, regulations and customs of the country in which they are based".
A poor performance
Aligning itself with the Chinese government has not helped Yahoo! become a successful business in China: after almost a decade there, it remains almost insignificant as a portal compared to local rivals like Sina, Sohu and Baidu. As a search engine chosen by only 5% of users as a first choice for searches in 2006, it is a very distant no. 3 behind Baidu (62%) and Google (25%), despite acquiring a 40% stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group (which now runs Yahoo!֒s China operations) for US$1bn in 2005. Alignment with the Chinese authorities is also a very short-sighted strategy. There is a strong political movement within the creative class inside China fighting for more freedom, and being on the opposite side of that creative class may eventually prove to be very costly to corporations that have chosen to stand with the government.
Yahoo!'s conduct in China is coming under increasing scrutiny: documents released in July 2007 show Yahoo! knew it was handling political cases when it passed on information about Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning to the authorities, leading to accusations it misled lawmakers at a U.S. congressional hearing in February 2006. The pressure seems to be having a positive effect, however, as there are encouraging signs the company is realising it needs to address these issues. In January 2007, Amnesty International joined a multi-stakeholder initiative with academics, socially responsible investment firms, other experts and companies including Yahoo!, to develop a set of voluntary principles to promote and respect human rights on the internet. Amnesty International welcomes this move and hopes it will lead to further improvements to Yahoo!s conduct in China, a first step towards making the worldҒs most populous country a more transparent society.
About the Author
This blog entry was created by James and does not necessarily represent the position or opinion of Amnesty International Australia.
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