American Companies Help China Censor the Net

KyleNicholson writes "It makes you wonder what is really being taught in Business Ethics classes today. American companies such as Sun, Microsoft, Nortel are helping to limit the freedoms of people around the world, even leading to executions. Here is a report by Amnesty International."

Wouldn't be the first time...

[cuyler]

...if I recall correctly, IBM is an American company. Although I haven't read it (it's on the list of books I have to read) this [edwinblack.com] book deals with the assistance that the 3rd Reich got from IBM.

Business ethics have nothing to do with it

[rlowe69]

"It makes you wonder what is really being taught in Business Ethics classes today. American companies such as Sun, Microsoft, Nortel are helping to limit the freedoms of people around the world, even leading to executions."

I really don't like this comment. These companies have nothing to do with China's policies, they are merely selling them a means to enforce those policies.

These companies are conforming to a Capitolist society (ours) which dictates that if they don't help China, their competitors will profit instead. How about blaming Capitolist ideals for this? It holds more water than your ethics reasoning.

Re:Business ethics have nothing to do with it

[TripleA]

Well, not really.
Ethics is allways ethics. Although, there are no universal ethics, but they are formed in every one of us after our free will. Some are greedier than others, and find it acceptable to sell their systems to non-democratic regimes.

Who said the US is much better anyway? At least, in China, I can't get sued for making a backup copy of a DVD that I have legally purchased.

Re:Wouldn't be the first time...

[MacAndrew]

I've wondered about this -- I wouldn't want to fall into the trap of sanctimony -- but I just don't buy it. It is easier to reconstruct what people knew and when they knew it than to decide when people of reasonable intelligence should have or probably did read between the lines. but for me, the 1935 Nuremberg laws deprived Jews of German citizenship and imposing numerous indignities were a point of no return. It was evident well before that that Hitler and his crew were a bunch of thugs. Finally the 1938 Kristallnacht [wiesenthal.com] was as blunt as one could get -- yet was met with apathy in the West. Our major affliction was not ignorance but isolationism, and it took Pearl Harbor to change our philosophy to interventionism.

There is no binary switch between moral and immoral conduct. Nor was there a precise moment of epiphany that it was time to spurn the Nazis. But of course some companies crossed the line. And why should we think they did not -- not even one of them? Even today we see that corporate run the gamut from pristine to deplorable, so logically some companies must have continued doing business even after the writing was on the wall. They should acknowledge their mistakes, or at least all the facts surrounded their conduct, address any necessary restitution, and get on with things. We expect no less of ordinary shoplifters.

If the plight of the Nazis Germans is not enough, recall that the infrastructure American companies helped Germany to build was in time turned against us.

The example I mention elsewhere in this thread is Henry Ford, a virulent anti-Semite who even bought a newspaper to publish his views. A google of Ford and Nazi provides plenty of reading. Most dramatic is Ford receiving the highest Nazi civilian honor in 1938. [washingtonpost.com]

Parenthetically, we are to varying degrees engaged in the problems with the trade issues you identify, perhaps too much, perhaps too little, according to whom you ask. But we do not have to be guiltless to smell something rotten from the past.

Re:Wouldn't be the first time...

[duffbeer703]

I disagree... the is a distinct point when a regime moves from a normal-everyday repressive dictatorship to a system as evil as wartime germany.

Remember to that the German propaganda minister, Joeseph Goebbels, was a public affairs genius who portrayed a very different view of Germany. When people are given a choice between accepting a positive spin from an official source or accepting the unpleasant truth from an unknown source, they often choose the spin.

Also remember that the US was fervently anti-communist and the Nazis were fighting the communists in Spain. Reports about concentration camps existed, but were not widely circulated and often disbelieved. (Also remember that most camps in the 30's were more like the the US's interment camps for Japanese-Americans than the Nazi horrors of the war)

I am not trying to make excuses for the actions of corporations. But I do not think it is fair to cast blame without trying to realize their point of view.