Alan T. Saracevic talks with Thomas Malinowski, former Clinton aide and the Washington director for Human Rights Watch

The consensus opinion is that the Yahoogles of the world deserve the double-standard label. They control information. And they're not supposed to do evil, right?

"I think there's a difference between buying products and actively participating in state repression," said Mila Rosenthal, director of the business and human rights program for Amnesty International USA. "The tech companies have a higher responsibility for being active participants."

Yeah, I'd buy that. But didn't we have an opportunity to address all this six years ago when Congress was debating China's admittance to the WTO?

Thomas Malinowski, the Washington director for Human Rights Watch, has a unique perspective on the matter. He testified before Lantos' committee last Wednesday. And back in 1990-2000, he was writing speeches for Bill Clinton in which the former president argued strenuously that doing business in China would be a democratizing force.

Clinton famously said: "If they try to control the Internet, good luck. It's like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall."

Apparently, Google's figured the Jell-O problem out. (Who else, right?) Their new Chinese site, google.cn, does a pretty good job at keeping news of democracy and the Falun Gong off the Chinese desktop.

"Are we holding the Internet companies to a higher standard? Yes. I think we are and I think that's right," said Malinowski. "If you look at how Google promotes itself -- they say they're in the business of transforming the world, making it a better place. They have a very idealistic message."

He continued: "Because they are the gatekeepers to this extraordinary medium, which has such political significance in places like China, their decisions have much greater capacity for good or harm than a company that provides financial services or manufactures something. The future of the Internet as a free medium has a great deal to do with the future of China."

So, what's the plan then?

Conal Walsh writes in The Observer

Senior Google executives are being deluged with complaints in an email campaign organised by opponents of the internet company's relationship with the Chinese government.

Students For A Free Tibet, a New York-based organisation campaigning against China's repressive policies, claims that more than 50,000 letters have been sent to Google bosses in recent days protesting at the company's decision to censor searches on its google.cn website in line with Beijing's wishes. Protesters have also staged public 'break-ups' with Google at demonstrations outside many of its offices around the world.

Rebecca MacKinnon and John Palfrey If they're not careful, Western tech companies could break up the Web.

China has also proved that censorship pays: it has developed a successful model for how government and business can collaborate to censor a nation's Internet activities. This model could be applied in any country. If we're not careful, we may wake up one day to discover that what a person can see and do on the Web will be radically different depending on which country he or she lives in: the Internet will become "The Internets." And U.S. tech firms won't have much of value left to sell if the Internet ceases to be the wonderful, world-connecting thing it is today. They must find a way to make their money in China without checking their values at the border. Morality aside, the long-term survival of their industry depends on it.

Sarah Schafer, also in Newsweek International, looks deep into the Chinese blogosphere and reports that A proliferation of voices is slowly dismantling the status quo in China.

Chinese Communist Party elders and U.S. lawmakers fired shots at China's powerful censors this week, but Li Xinde says muck-raking campaigners like himself are undermining the country's barriers to free speech every day.

Li is one of just a handful of Internet investigative reporters, exposing corrupt officials and injustice on his China Public Opinion Surveillance Net (www.yuluncn.com).

Then he spreads his often outrageous, sometimes gruesome stories on some of the 49 blogs he uses to slip past censors.

"They shut down one, so I move to another," he told Reuters.

CRI via Xinhua

Canadian ambassador to China Robert Wright on Friday called for Canada and China to further expand their investment scale.

The ambassador noted that bilateral investment volume between the two countries is still too low as compared with the current rapid growing bilateral trade volume.

China is now the second largest trade partner of Canada after the United States. The China-Canada trade volume reached 35 billion Canadian dollars (approximately 25 billion US dollars) last year, while the bilateral investment volume was much lower.

Canadian investments in China in actual use were only 4.5 billion US dollars until 2004, and Chinese investments in Canada were less than 500 million US dollars.

However, the situation is improving, Wright said, noting that some Canadian financial, telecom and insurance companies are exploring the Chinese market at present.

Canadian telecom giant Nortel Networks set up a group of more than 1,000 researchers in south China's Guangdong Province.

Bill Baue: Boston Common Asset Management submits testimony to congressional hearings asserting that protecting shareholder value and respecting human rights are not mutually exclusive mandates.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which proposed a Code of Conduct for Internet Companies in Authoritarian Regimes at the hearing, recently filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T (T) alleging illegal collusion with National Security Agency (NSA) on wiretapping. Although the suit is focused on stopping the domestic surveillance, it necessarily seeks damages (as specifically provided for in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act) of at least $21,000 for each victim affected. With millions of AT&T customers, potential liabilities reach into the billions, according to EFF Media Coordinator Rebecca Jeschke--which translates into a significant risk to shareholder value.

"AT& T was responding to requests that--as it turns out--were potentially illegal, and that's exactly the situation companies like Yahoo and Microsoft are finding themselves in with their operations in China," said Ms. Wolfe. "A big part of the debate is, what do companies do when they are presented with supposedly legal requests that nevertheless violate basic Constitutional rights or the Norms on freedom of expression and security and privacy--these are very complicated questions for companies."