Google’s possible closure of its operations in China will not atone for all the harm it—and other leading tech companies—have done there.

The Internet colossus has just announced that it will quite likely be winding up its China venture as a response to the Chinese government’s attempts to hack into the company’s systems to get into dissidents’ gmail accounts.

Google needs to get off its high horse. It knew four years ago when it started its China undertaking that censorship and repression are the mainstays of the Chinese regime, and agreed to accordingly self-censor. (A search on the Chinese version of Google for the terms “Tiananmen Square,” “Tibet” or “Falun Gong” yields nothing.) Google rationalized that its presence in China was a step forward for the Chinese people and that they anyway weren’t concerned about free speech.

“People are actually quite free to talk about” democracy and human rights in China, the head of Google’s China subsidiary told the New York Times in 2006. “I don't think they care that much. I think people would say: ‘Hey, U.S. democracy, that's a good form of government. Chinese government, good and stable, that's a good form of government. Whatever, as long as I get to go to my favorite website, see my friends, live happily.’ ” ll

If Google’s behavior has been questionable, that of other Internet giants has been downright reprehensible. Cisco sells surveillance systems to the Chinese government. Microsoft has censored Chinese bloggers. And Yahoo actually took the mindboggling step of turning over information on three dissidents to the government, two of whom have received a jail sentence of ten years each as a result.

The collusion became so glaring that Congress in 2006 held a hearing, with Republican lawmakers joining their Democratic colleagues in chastising these entities. Amnesty International issued a report outlining their misdeeds.

“All three companies have in different ways facilitated or participated in the practice of government censorship in China,” Amnesty stated. “The willingness of Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google to override their principles amounts to a betrayal of trust in the face of the lucrative opportunities that the Chinese market offers them.” http://www.amnestyusa.org/business/yahoo.html

Certainly, these Internet giants are not the only multinational corporations to have a snug relationship with the largest Stalinist system in the world. On the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Human Rights Watch issued a report taking the leading sponsors (a list that included Panasonic, Visa, Kodak and Johnson & Johnson) to task for their studied silence on China’s various human rights abuses. And, of course, the massive presence of Western manufacturing in China is based on the paradox of strict labor control on behalf of corporations by a supposedly worker-controlled party.

But there’s a special irony in supposed champions of free speech eagerly colluding in censorship and the muzzling of dissent. Google’s belated move doesn’t even begin to make amends.

Amitabh Pal is the Managing Editor of The Progressive magazine. To subscribe for just $14.97 a year, just click here.