China Controls US Media Channels

China's control of US media channels is the subject of an article today in the Wall Street Journal (China’s Content Crackdown Forces Western Media Concessions ) and what it points to is something I wrote about several years ago, the willingness of the Chinese government to censor anyone who has content that might be read by people in China.

Most of us remember that this started with Google and their unwillingness to bow to censorship of content on the Internet that the Chinese did not like.  These were things like the Chinese definition of pornography, which is somewhat more like the Puritans than a country's government.   It also included dissent.  When Google wouldn't cooperate, the Chinese hacked the accounts.

A number of "foreign" press operate in China, and some of them openly cooperate with the new laws on ownership and content.  This is a tricky area for the free press to operate in.  They are cooperating with dubious restrictions on what and how to publish content in China.

The New York Times has taken a different approach, and continues to publish and attempt to allow the distribution of translated text directly to those who can find ways to get it.  Sometimes, that is difficult and dangerous, for both the people who look at that content and those who distribute it.  It is equally difficult for those who cooperate with the government.

The Chinese have shown a remarkable ability to get foreign companies to cooperate with objectionable policies from forcing the delivery of proprietary and trade secret information to these press restrictions.  What we are seeing now are press outlets who cooperate with the Chinese in restricting access to certain types of content that is distributed in China.  They do this for advertising revenue that comes with, similar to the reasoning of Boards of Directors who allow the illegal transfer of technology to China solely for the profits that come from selling goods there.  It kind of reminds me of a fat little Communist leader, Nikita Khrushchev, of was famous for pounding his shoe on a table while addressing the UN in 1960.  He said, "We will bury you."  He was talking about the West, and its inability to stop trading with Commnunist countries like his.  He claimed the profit motive drove too much of what businesses did.  He inferred that he would use the rope made by US manufacturers to hang them.