LinkedIn debacle may come back to haunt the Chinese authorities

There were no winners when LinkedIn announced last week that it was making adjustments to its China censorship policy. Not LinkedIn, not Chinese internet users and not even the Chinese authorities.

LinkedIn ends up with jianbing all over its face for a number of reasons. The company comes across as being tragically naive (what were they thinking when they agreed to cleanse global news feeds of sensitive Chinese news?), woefully ill-prepared (did they think nobody would notice?) and not very forthcoming (which needs more than a set of brackets to explain).

if Linkedin "has occasionally blocked Sinocism within China" why I have only received one single notice about it? @hdurzy

— Bill Bishop (@niubi) September 4, 2014

Most media reports fail to pinpoint the real reason behind LinkedIn’s censorship kowtow. LinkedIn’s “entry” into China is really about selling (mainly) recruitment advertising to China-based companies. To be able to issue official receipts and to operate a website in China, you need a local company. So LinkedIn had to open a local office and abide by local restrictions. That includes censoring content that users post on its website.

Had LinkedIn decided to forego generating revenue in China, the company would have continued to “connect Chinese professionals to the global business community” - the site was already operational in China, available in Chinese and 4 million users had found it - and, arguably, could have continued to sell recruitment advertising abroad to be delivered back into China.

Instead, they revealed to the entire world that freedom of access to information for Chinese is not as important as making a buck and that Chinese deserve to be treated as second-class global information citizens.

But the biggest loser in this episode may well be the Chinese authorities.

It’s a logical extension for the authorities to ask foreign internet companies to cleanse negative China content globally. If these companies are willing to bend over backwards to get into the country, maybe they could bend a little more.

But now any similar future requests will immediately lead to pushback and a retelling of LinkedIn’s bumbled approach. Although this still must be a tempting request for the authorities - would anything be more pleasing to them than ridding social media of all pro-Tibetan independence posts?

Tibetan Singers Imprisoned by the Chinese for .... Singing.. http://t.co/ZS07x3n9g9

— Thom Yorke (@thomyorke) December 14, 2013

But the authorities larger misstep might just be in the heavy-handedness of their approach. There are few foreign internet success stories in China and the LinkedIn debacle has added to that misery. The alternate approach is just as dim. Google stands at the opposite end of the spectrum as a company that tried different approaches to China. But all signs now point to them having given up on making progress in China.

Google: "There's nothing wrong on our end" - Shenzhen court accepts #China censorship lawsuit http://t.co/qzCaTNPmIq via @nyt

— Kieran Maynard (@KieranMaynard) September 8, 2014

But the authorities may have shown their cards too soon. Two foreign internet giants are standing in the wings watching closely. Neither of the above approaches seems appealing and only the hopelessly optimistic continue to say that “the situation will change, slowly, for the better, just wait and see”. Working with the authorities has proven fruitless.

The situation is not changing for the better. More websites are being blocked, domestic censorship is increasing and the Edward Snowden revelations have just served to entrench China’s decision-makers.

But China’s success in creating domestic internet giants is not exactly as it seems. These internet giants still rely on the global internet infrastructure if they want to serve customers in China and abroad. China’s leading companies leverage global cloud services providers to deliver web content quickly around the world.

At GreatFire.org, we are staging a battle for internet freedom in the cloud. Since we launched “FreeGoogle” in June of this year, the authorities have made consistent daily attempts to shut us down, all without success. To the contrary, our “FreeGoogle” site is used by tens of thousands of Chinese each day, we continue to free blocked content and we are seeing more instances of individuals unblocking their own websites using our technique.

As the authorities place even greater restrictions on foreign internet properties who wish to operate in China, they are giving these companies little room to manoeuvre and pushing them to adopt alternative approaches. Leveraging the global cloud by implementing collateral freedom will effectively turn the tables on the Chinese authorities. They will be left with one of two choices - to allow information to flow freely or to cut China off from the global internet. So far, we have shown that the Chinese authorities are not willing to take the latter step. Here’s hoping that they never do.