Mike Schubert, Senior Application Architect, Atlanta, Georgia, triathlete, ironman

January 31, 2006

Google Censorship in China

As a follow-up to yesterday's entry, I thought I would explore the censorship that Google was enacting in order to appease the Chinese government. The protests and ensuing violence that took place near Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989 are a taboo topic in China and only the views of the party are allowed to be disseminated. Many of you would think this would be one of the first things to be censored.

Search Engine Watch posted a side-by-side comparison of images.google.com and images.google.cn doing a search for tiananmen using the western character set. Yes, there seems to be some censorship going on there. They suggest that you mis-spell tiananmen (change the a's to e's) at which point you will have defeated the english censorship. While that is interesting, it's not realistic of how a Chinese gal sitting behind a computer is going to do a Google search.

I think I have my translation proper that Tiananmen = 天安門 - it's the gate of heavenly ascension. When you execute this search, you will notice towards the bottom of the first page what looks like stain in the shape of a human body. If you click through, you will find a Japanese page with all sorts of images of crushed bicyclists, tanks, the access road to Tiananmen Square, etc. Based on the results, I guess my Chinese translation is correct.

So what is being censored? Based on my non-scientific approach, it is hard to say. My assertion yesterday was that the Chinese wanted to preclude its citizens from creating and viewing sites that promote unrest and revolt against the government. There is probably more to it, but I don't think it is as clear cut as the paranoid American society wants to make it.

Posted by Mike at 8:00 AM

January 30, 2006

The Difference Between America and the Rest of the World

Google has received a lot of flack over the past week regarding their refusal to hand over information to the US Department of Justice and their agreement with the chinese to censor search results. I think it is unfair to characterize these decisions as greedy. Rather, it is smart business that is merely observing the laws of the jurisdictions they wish to operate in.

For those of you in the United States, if a police officer came to your home (without a warrant or any prompting of any kind) and asked you if he could look around, would you let him? Probably not. Does that mean you have something to hide? No. It just means that in the United States, we have some level of a right of privacy from governmental intrusion without probably cause. If you were a US citizen staying in the Beijing International Hotel and an officer came to your room and asked if he could look around, would you let him? The fact is, you probably wouldn't have a choice, but you would be saving face by allowing it and would end up with a lot less hassle in the end.

My point is that businesses are just like people in that they have to operate according to the laws of the juridictions they are operating within. If the DOJ could come up with a good reason other than "you have a lot of data and we sure would like to look at it", it would be a different matter. But simply wanting to look at their data isn't a good enough reason for them to hand it over in the United States.

Conversely, while China is the site of increasing demonstration and protest activity, speech is not a freedom like it is in the United States. The Internet has opened the world to the Chinese like nothing else could. Information flows freely much the same as it does here. My understanding of what the Chinese government is trying to censor is access to sites that incite political unrest that goes beyond civil disobedience. Some sites offer viewpoints and suggestions that are the equivalent of yelling FIRE! in a movie theatre.

I imagine they will eventually reach the same level of freedoms we are at (after all, nirvana is central to the buddhist faith). If Iraq has taught us one thing, it should be that governments cannot change their forms overnight. It is a slow and sometimes painful process. We are used to getting things on demand, but changing the way of life for 1.5 billion people can't be one of those things. So let Google help them censor some stuff - just imagine how the rest of what is in their indexes can benefit from having China engaged in the conversation.

Posted by Mike at 1:02 PM

January 29, 2006

Xin nian yu kuai!

Happy Lunar New Year!

This is the word "Fu", upside down. It means luck. And about the only time you will see a chinese word hung upside down is on a banner announcing the arrival of the new year.

This year is the year of the dog. There is a lot more to the new year than simply assigning an animal to keep track of it. Unfortunately, it won't all fit on the placemat at your local chinese restaurant. Here is a site with more information on the mathematics of the Chinese calendar.

Chinese people like the barking sound because "woof-woof" makes an association of the Chinese character "wang," which means prosperity.

Funny. My barking dogs only seem to bring on headaches and vet bills. But even if they are a cost center, I love them just the same. This is an auspicious year for marriage as well. Many chinese will choose to get married in the year of the dog. So will divorce be fashionable next year in the year of the pig? I guess we'll just have to wait to find out.

Posted by Mike at 5:36 PM

January 4, 2006

Chinese Law

The real news story here is not about politically motivated imprisonment nor the early release of the journalist. The level of punishment the politician who took bribes and embezzled public funds received is what should really be noted (Ma was a mayor, if memory serves me correctly). That is a level of political accountability America will never come close to!

Jiang reported that Ma lost nearly 30 million yuan ($3.7 million) in public funds gambling in Macau casinos. Ma was arrested, convicted and executed in 2001 for taking bribes, embezzling public funds and gambling overseas

Posted by Mike at 11:30 AM

September 19, 2005

China Pictures

One month ago today, I returned from my two week trip to China. It was a very eye opening experience and one of the best things I've ever done in my life. Photoshop finally decided to cooperate, and I have a first pass of pictures up on my site. The trip began on August 6th and ended August 19th. We had adventures in the following places:

Tokyo - I know, this isn't in China. To top it off, it was only supposed to be a 2 hour stay to change planes.
Beijing
Chongqing
Yangtze River Cruise
Three Gorges Dam project and Yichang
Shanghai
Hong Kong

Click on the thumbnail to view a larger version and any random thoughts I have in a caption below it. If you went on the trip with me and would like a larger version of the photo, let me know and I will arrange for you to get them in a free manner (each file was 1MB and I haven't uploaded them in full size as yet).

I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed the experiences that involved taking them. And in case you missed it, here is my ealier post about exotic food.

Posted by Mike at 12:00 PM

September 1, 2005

Exotic Food

Many of you have asked "Mike, what was the strangest thing you ate in China?" The answer - jellyfish. It was cooked, but served chilled and shredded to look sort of like spaghetti noodles (only, the color of jellyfish that had been cooked in some sauce). The taste - like calamari. So, the next time you're in a nice Italian restaurant with some friends enjoying a calamari appetizer, you can say "Gee, this tastes just like jellyfish!".

As for the strangest food I saw, check out this clip. Sorry the video is so sucky, I took it on my digital camera, which takes great pictures, but crappy movies. Keep your eye on the 2nd row of food, to the right of the two square bowls of water. I have no idea what that is, but it is definitely moving. This was a pretty nice looking restaurant on Temple Street in Hong Kong. You pick out what you want to eat and they take it back and prepare it while you sit down and have a beverage. Unfortunately, I had just dined on jellyfish about a half hour before we wandered down here, so I was too full to try out the moving food.

As for pictures from the trip, I'm still working on getting the captions to print out in their entirety from Photoshop (running version 6, maybe an upgrade is in order). It seems there is a 256 character limit on the output of a caption. That's a real bummer. I sure don't want to have to go through and caption these suckers again. I guess the bright side to that is there are only a handful of imags where I used more than 256 characters to describe the scene or my adventures. Hopefully, this process will be complete over the Labor Day weekend.

Posted by Mike at 10:00 AM

August 24, 2005

The Forbidden City & Tiananmen Square

Our trip to China was wonderfully balanced between business and culture. Here is our group in Tiananmen Square with our backs to the Forbidden City. (Note: Still working on photoshopping the files to cut the file size down and get rid of the pesky distorition...)

The size of the square is gigantic. It is said that 1 million Chinese could easily fit in the square. Other estimates say that you could have every event of the olympics going on in the square at the same time. I'm not so sure about that (I guess the marathon could run laps around it), but it is certainly enormous. Here is a picture from roughly the half-way point in front of Mao Tse-Dong's memorial.

Speaking of Mao - he's embalmed and lying in state inside of this building. Word is that if you want to go in for a viewing, expect to stand in line for half of a day. Wow. Maybe on my 5th or 6th trip to Beijing, but there is just so many other things to see and do that 1/2 day ain't happening! The queue line wraps all the way around the building and then wraps back and forth several times at the entrance. This picture of the line and building was taken around 9:30am and you see how many people are already there!

Posted by Mike at 6:45 PM

August 20, 2005

Back From China - Not a Moment Too Soon!

I arrived home from my 2 week stint in China last night. Our group traveled on Northwest Airlines and was aware when we departed on August 6th that there may be a strike by the mechanics union on August 20th. We were scheduled to return on August 19th and fortunately, everything worked out so we were home 5 hours before the mechanics walked out.

Over the next several weeks, I will be posting entries and pictures about my trip to China. It was part of a study abroad program at Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business focusing on transition economies. This year was China, next year is Russia, and the year after South Africa. Then the program loops back around.

I have always been fascinated with the history and culture of Asia and China in particular. When this opportunity arose to study China as an emerging economy as part of my MBA curriculum, I jumped at it. There are many good stories in China and many emerging business opportunities as well. We made a total of 9 company visits in Beijing, Chongqing, Shaghai and Hong Kong. I have many pages of notes from these visits that I will assimilate and post. In between, we visited culturally significant places - the Forbidden City, Great Wall, Summer Palace, cruised the Yangtze, visited the Temple of the Jade Buddha and ascended Victoria's Peak, among many other jaunts.

Back to today's thought about being home. It's interesting that the mechanics went on strike. In several of our meetings, I inquired about the presence and role of labor unions in China. In the cases where they existed, they were not active in the respect that unions in the United States are. They are there generally for two purposes - 1) To ensure that the regulations imposed by the state are being enacted, and 2) To maintain harmony between employees and management. Collective bargaining to the extent we see in the US does not yet take the same form in China. From talking to a few representatives, I got the same general response - employees realize that should they walk off the job, more people will suffer than just the company. Very true - and amazing. They don't want their fellow employees in other positions to suffer, nor do they want the customers to suffer.

A few of us awaiting our flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta reflected on the Eastern Airlines pilot strike in the 80's that put the company out of business. I don't think Northwest will suffer a similar fate, but I wonder how much different things would be if they had a more Chinese attitude.

Posted by Mike at 5:50 PM