DISQUS

Gary McGath · 1 year ago

China will still have "American content" whether or not American businesses are operating in China. The alternative you suggest is a false one.

While American companies have a business presence in China, and employees who are in the country, they're subject to extortion of information about dissidents. Lobbying for changes isn't going to help the immediate situation. If a company faces the choice between helping to violate the rights of dissidents and pulling out of a country, its moral obligation is to pull out.

bradencox · 1 year ago

I disagree that China's citizens would still have the same amount of access to American content or anything that resembles pro-democracy / human rights content. For instance, Google does a good job of self-censoring to remove what it thinks will be offending content from a page, so that at least some content from a particular website gets through. Otherwise, China's censors would just block the entire page. Google doesn't know exactly what will or won't offend censors - it's not like there's an official list. It likely pushes the boundary to see what it can or can't get away with. A Chinese ISP would not have access to the unblocked pages because it would already be behind the government's firewall, and therefore less content would be available to the Chinese people.