Google & Co: Selbstzensur in China

Die New York Times geht der Frage nach, wie denn die US-Firmen in China zensieren und das ist sehr interessant: Google’s China Problem (and China’s Google Problem).

American Internet firms typically arrive in China expecting the government to hand them an official blacklist of sites and words they must censor. They quickly discover that no master list exists. Instead, the government simply insists the firms interpret the vague regulations themselves. The companies must do a sort of political mind reading and intuit in advance what the government won’t like. Last year, a list circulated online purporting to be a blacklist of words the government gives to Chinese blogging firms, including “democracy” and “human rights.” In reality, the list had been cobbled together by a young executive at a Chinese blog company. Every time he received a request to take down a posting, he noted which phrase the government had objected to, and after a while he developed his own list simply to help his company avoid future hassles.