Michael+and+Ashley+-+CD+-+FA10

Describe the history of communist rule in China and how the country developed to its current global role. Mao Zedong led the communists to gain control of China. Mao's ideas appealed to the poor. He promised that they would have equal opportunity. He and the communists gained power in 1949. The Chinese communists worte a new constitution. This constitution promised democratic rights to all the citizens, when China became a one-party dictatorship. Members of the Communist party had all the important jobs and were in control, both politically and economically. They turned China into a totalitarian state, which is when the government controls every aspect of citizens' lives through a single-party democracy. When Mao died and Deng Xiaoping took his place, he let go of some of the extreme control Mao had in China. Deng also allowed students to study abroad, and he allowed foreign investment in China. China's students assembled in Beijing protesting for democratic reforms. When the government told the students they needed to go home in 1989, and they didn't comply, the army killed or wounded thousands of people. During the 1990s, China reformed economically, but kept their political power. When people tried to support democracy, they were arrested. China came to be in their current global role because when Deng Xiaoping came to power, they progressed economically. Production in China is very efficient, so they sell a large number of products. Also, under Xiaoping, China encouraged trade with other countries. Their interations and the sale of China-made products has been a major contributor to how China developed to its current Global role.

Explain, from your perspective, China's stance on:

China is suppressing their peoples' rights to freedom of speech by censoring the internet. We shut down our China search engine, google.cn, because we disagreed with China's censorship of the internet, however we believed we could do good despite these restrictions. We do not think we have broken any promises we made to China or that what we are doing is wrong. In actuality, we are promoting free speech and usage of the internet, one of Google's fundamental goals.
 * Human Rights - Freedom of Speech

We were interested in what China could do for our business. China has major business relationships with the United States and other countries, that we decided it could benefit us and China if we tried to set up our service there. In addition, they have a significantly larger population than that of the United States. Getting only half of the population to use our services would be a significant gain for our country.
 * Global Interdependence - Specific Focus on economic relationships

China's environmental issues, while important, are not number one. China, as the largest manufacturer in the world, generates more poullition than many other countries. While we believe that China should take efforts to lowering their carbon footprint, we have no experience with lessening poullition, and are more focused on the humanitarian aspect of free speech and other rights to the Chinese population.
 * Environment - Air and Water pollution

Google disagrees with China's treatment of their people, especially those who oppose the government or are not part of an 'inner party' of sorts with the Chinese government. We believed that, with our origional instillation of our search engine and other services in China we could help this. Although we had noble intentions, we could not successfully fulfill this goal, so we had decided to leave China.
 * Tolerance of Diversity - Acceptance and treatment of other groups (some who oppose the government)

What efforts have you taken to interact with China? We tried to establish a search engine in China for the benefit of the people and of our business. We decided to terminate these efforts when we decided that it would be best if we stopped censoring the searches and China got upset about it. We believe that this was the best option both for our company and for China.

What success have you had on promoting a positive relationship with China?

Unfortunately, absolutely none. China has, despite our repeated efforts, constantly gone against any world efforts to give freedom of speech a fair chance within their country. We believed that working with the governments, even though we censored our search results, would provide significant advances to the general population of China even if we temporarily sacrificed ideals for the betterment of the Chinese society as a whole. However, the only thing standing between us and the ability to serve the Chinese people was the government, In order to try to help the people, we had to follow the governments laws on censorship. Despite following all of the governments legalities on what was and wasn't permissable to show the chinese people, including completely removing some services from China, the GMail services that we offer free of charge to the people came under attack by hackers we believe to be funded by the Chinese government. It would be a fair statement to say, that despite our efforts, the Chinese government has chosen to try to hinder our main goal regardless of geographic, government, or socioeconomic stading of a country; to promote free speech and to try to provide relevant services to consumers. As we had tried to do these main goals within China, we felt that we were failing on our mission statement within China, and are removing services because of the governments actions against the people, which we feel is intolerable. Although we have not been successful in adequetely fulfilling both business and humanitarian goals, we have tried to work with the government. If the Chinese government were to try to work with us towards fixing the aforementioned problems within their borders, we would reconsider offering more of our services on the governments terms; until then, we will not offer our services in China.

Google, in all of its business goals, has an interest in working with China to progress towards what is considered a responsible country to its people. However, we cannot support a country under its current regieme of censorship and ruthless control of their peoples' ideas about government and how a country should be run. Until these actions by the Chinese government cease, we cannot support them in any way. While they continue to censor the media, oppress the people, and choose to resist progress towards a democratic society, we cannot support them. We do wish to access the huge consumer market of China without sacrificing any of our non-profit oriented goals. Unfortunately the government has prevented us from performing these actions. Although we will not actively oppose China, we will choose not to provide services in China because of this idealogical difference.
 * Discuss the intent your country has in promoting (or working against) the progress of China.

What impact with China have on the next 50 years of world history? China has the ability to become one of the worlds largest exporters of goods as well as an extremely large consumer market, with a population of over 1.3 billion people, all of which are moving quickly towards the 21st century, better goods, such as cars and computers, and civil liberties other countires have yet China lacks. China's role in the future will be determined by how their population behaves in relation to the government. If the government is incapable of effectively controlling the population by democracy or authoritarian rule and directing them towards a better future, China will fall by the wayside, with little to no effect on the distant future. On the other side of the argument, if China becomes a successful country booming with business and education, China could become a dominating force in research and development of modern products and technology. As with any form of prediction of countries success is impossible due to the many factors involved, it is possible to tell what will likely occur. The entirety of China's future is up to themselves and the other countries of the world; as is any major change in the world economic climate. China has the potential to do great things, but it also has the potential to fail.

Google Inc., "The Official Google Blog" A New Approach to China. 12 Jan 2010. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

All opinions of the company "Google" derived from aforementioned blog, all available throughout "googleblog.blogspot.com". All other information common knowledge.