Many people in the United States do not realize the kind of freedoms that they enjoy compared to life in many other countries. In China, the citizens do not have nearly the quality of life that the people of the United States have. One big issue is freedom of information and ability to speak out about issues. There are very strict rules and censorship of the internet in China. "The Great Firewall" as it is known blocks many websites and information from people's access. Most sites about government information and many communication sites are unable to be accessed by Chinese people. This is a form of social injustice forced by the government. The people are working very hard to find a way around these barriers, but have not had much success.
Many large, American companies such as Cisco, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo have expanded to China. However, the government places restrictions on the use of the systems. In 2002, Cisco approved a sale of $100,000 worth of routers and internet equipment to the Chinese government. It was later released that this equipment was used to build the "The Golden Shield" by the Chinese government. This blocked millions of people's access to the internet. This is probably why Cisco tried to cover up it and only debated this sale internally with their officials. The other companies also have done business in China for similar purposes. Google and Yahoo allow the government to limit what websites and searches are allowed by their engines. Google, especially put up a huge fight to work with the government and help the people access information. However their efforts were not able to stop censorship.
The United States government is not happy that their companies are contributing to social injustice in other countries. The government is not the only one, as Arvind Ganesan, a director at the nonprofit Human Rights Watch said "If you know ahead of time that a sale could lead to human rights violations, and there’s no way of mitigating that, maybe you shouldn’t offer it to that entity,". The government realized this state of distress by it's members and the citizen's of the United States and called a conference to discuss the issue. The companies defended themselves. I believe that companies have every right to sell their products to people all over the world. Though I do not feel it is ethically right for them to sell them if they know the products will be used to limit human rights, I do not feel it is the government's place to tell them that they cannot. Companies such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco are privately owned companies. They are not ran by or affiliated with the government in anyway. This should mean that they are free to operate their business with the out the government telling them what to do. The capability of a product to be used for censorship should not limit its ability to be sold.
Many people do not feel this way and think that the United States has an obligation to protect people's rights all over the world. The United States could place restrictions to help the people of China by helping to block resources to the Chinese government. This can be viewed similarly to other plans the United States have used in the past to bring freedoms to people. As an American company, companies should be forced to follow the values of the country. They should be expected to be against social injustices and definitely not help the governments create it. Many people in China are fighting to find a way to have freedom on the internet, and the United States should not be making it harder for them.
Chinese people have made many strides to help bypass the "Great Firewall" and gain freedoms on the internet. But are their efforts enough? The Chinese government is huge and very powerful. "The Great Firewall" is very detailed and complicated. Hacking it would be very difficult if not impossible. Even when people find ways around the restrictions the government finds a way to shut them down. "The idea is that coders elsewhere get to Twitter, and offer up feeds at their own URLs—which the government has to chase down one by one." says Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. People will never be completely successful because the government will always find them. The government is using many high-tech methods to block the micro blogs that people are using to try to access information. These include IP filtering, DNS blocking and redirecting, URL filtering, and packet filtering, and connect resetting. This is too much for people to bypass without something being done to limit the government's actions. Even though they have had some success with their blogs and some successful protests no real change has been made. The battle for protesters is so difficult because the government has truly stepped up the censorship. They are working to build a massive system with an comprehensive surveillance network. This would be equipped with the latest technology monitoring people in every way possible. How can a group of activists compete with that? As much as I would like to believe the people can win this fight it's just too big. Even a huge company like Google was not able to win the battle against censorship, The people will need a partner, probably another country, to come in and help them.
People are finding some success such as the use of UltraSurf and other programs as different way to access the internet without censorship. They can also use the readily available proxies and virtual private networks. People have found success by posting their stories and grievances. For example in 2003 when the story of Sun Zhigang's death was told online the uproar led to the law causing it to be overturned. The "underground" internet blogs are slowly becoming the most popular way for people to get true information about what is going on in their world. In these ways it is helping to increase the freedoms of the Chinese people, but the government is always looking and watching. Many websites are being shut down and blocked every day.
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