Yesterday evening approximately 50 people, including many Chinese nationals, gathered in a room at the Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research to discuss, with a distinguished panel of experts, to discuss whether Google should be in business behind China’s great firewall. Isabel Hilton, China expert and editor, openDemocracy.net, chaired the meeting. Kenneth Cukier from the Economist, Freelance writer Bill Thompson, and Technology editor Becky Hogge of openDemocracy joined her at the table. Google’s engagement with China’s ruthlessly repressive government has thrown the company into the media spotlight. It seems to have thrown up lots of new questions and some people are asking whether or not it should operate in the country at all. But as the discussion progressed it became clear this is in fact just a new technology raising old issues.

Bill Thompson was quick to highlight that business has a commercial imperative and a responsibility to shareholders. Not entering China would have been foolish. Google, he said, had been as responsible as possible and deserves credit for its level of transparency. Isabel Hilton said the question was not whether Google should be in business in China or not - it should - but under which conditions and with which limits. To say that there are no ethical limits to economic return is to ignore history (cf the slave trade and environmental crime). She provided the powerful example of wartime IBM which was complicit in the holocaust, providing technology - in the form of Hollerith machines - that facilitated the identification and cataloguing programs of the 1930s and the selections of the 1940s. IBM’s position at the time was that evil was not the loss of life but the threat of loss of business – a clear example of business violating ethics. China is not Nazi Germany and does not have a policy of ethical cleansing, but some 80 million citizens have died under the regime.

But can and should business really be responsible for democratisation? Kenneth Cukier pointed out that this issue has been raised before when Rupert Murdoch introduced Sky Television to China. It was generally agreed that constructive and liberalising engagement could eventually lead to change and that, even if there’s not a more open political system in China now, there is more personal freedom and more freedom of information than before. As a major economic force in China, Google would be more likely in the future to be able to push for further change. The internet however, is not only censored but acts as a highly efficient spying network for the government. Isabel insisted that the way a government treats its citizens is of international concern. It is important to engage commercially but we need to take collective action to set out guiding principles with regards to how companies conduct business in such countries. China is sensitive about its image abroad and aware that Tiananmen Square affected its international respectability. It is currently striving for recognition, but Isabel reminded us that we must not let economic size be the only decider of respect.

Becky Hogge agreed, saying that the Internet was not just another product or service but a political opportunity. Blogging communities are the only form of free press in certain countries. In China only very technically able users can access proxy services to bypass the 30,000 strong Internet Police. China also acts as a regional internet service provider in countries such as Vietnam so this raises extended questions of freedom. The internet was a citizen led, egalitarian movement but this is changing. For instance, it is now possible to pay for faster emails. This may create a tiered system which undermines essential qualities of the web. Perhaps, she suggested, it has been through its rebellious phase and now needs regulating and protecting through the Global Online Freedom Act as advocated by Congressman Christopher Smith. ‘Who controls the internet?’ was not a question she’d ever expected to have to ask and, as we haven’t got global governance right yet, not one that is easily answered.

Bill Thompson asked the audience to consider the hypocrisy of the US Senate which supports and endorses theocratic regimes elsewhere, namely Saudi Arabia. The United States is fearful of China’s population growth and its technological and economical advances.

But ethical limits and corporate responsibility were not the only old issues thrown up here. Kenneth Cukier argued that media and sovereignty is a timeless issue. Traditionally media has been resistant to government regulation as it can be used for both freedom and restriction, but here we are asking for a law. Government approaches to censorship are in any case universal, he said. Since 9/11 the United States wants the right to take down the internet if it deems it necessary and this too is a threat to freedom. It is ironic, he said, that the left is so seduced by the idea that US military intervention - a hard power - is abhorrent but that we want to legislate against the internet, which is a soft power.

All governments restrict speech and in China the current system is a vast improvement on prior system of controlled media. Kenneth concluded by comparing the situation to economic liberalisation in the 1980s and encouraged the West to engage and support China in this process.