Evil is afoot!  In China!  Evil, Evil Evil!!! Lets boycott everyone!

From Getty Images:

The third part of our business is the Licensing of our International Imagery on the Editorial side into China, in other words, News, Sports, Entertainment Imagery from all around the world being sold into China. That is done by an agent and that agent operates under the auspices of one of the organs of the Chinese, not government but related to the Chinese government. And as a result of that, they make sure, that agents that they do not pull foul at the authorities because we think that it’s very important to be very sensitive to what’s happening in that market. I mean at the end of the day what speaks most about the Chinese situation is that long-term, it’s going to be very big market for us, short-term it won’t be and it’s the only joint venture we had anywhere in the world and that’s the joint venture on the Creative side and that’s because of sensitivity to the local market and how things are going over there. So yeah we are investing in it and we are pretty confident but don’t expect China to significantly or radically move to get the images numbers in the next several years.

News Corp:

Google isn’t the first to put profit above principle in China. In 1994, Rupert Murdoch stopped broadcasting British Broadcasting Corp. programs on the News Corp. network in China after the government complained about coverage of the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations. In 1998, News Corp.’s publishing house, HarperCollins, refused to publish a book by Christopher Patten, former governor of Hong Kong, that was critical of China.

Siemens AG:

Shanghai’s city administration has already enquired (about subscribing) and wants to use IPTV for its own community information network, Muhrer said.

Programming contents are supplied by Shanghai Media Group, a media subsidiary of Shanghai Media & Entertainment Group.

‘Programming content is a delicate subject in China, of course, so any information content supplied through the Internet must be treated according to the country’s regulatory laws,’ Muhrer said of the prevailing censorship by the Chinese authorities.

‘However, there still is content that does not fall under censorship laws, like online games or sports broadcasts.’ Leading Chinese online games provider, Shanda in Shanghai, had already expressed interest in the IPTV project, he said.

AsiaPundit recently spoke with a Siemens executive who was in China who was very upfront in admitting that the company would be abiding by Chinese restrictions in its Internet protocol television (IPTV) venture. Fons noted (in comments here) that European companies have confided that their filters are just as good as Cisco’s.

The above items are worth noting for several reasons. Firstly, the big US search engines are not the only companies censoring content in China — they just get the most attention due to their successful branding.

As well, it seems that many of those who are calling for a boycott of Google are avid watchers of Fox News (brought to you by the company that censored both the BBC and Chris Patten).

This is not to suggest that they should also be calling a boycott of News Corp or Siemens products. AsiaPundit is deeply concerned about censorship in China but he will still use gmail, play with his xbox, watch the Simpsons and make toast with his Siemens toaster.

However, those who are having so much fun suggesting that Google is hypocritical and those who enjoy bashing American tech companies should take a wider view.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, east asia, media, northeast asia