As the nation looks for any and all ways to jump start the economy, the administration and Congress are renewing their focus on international trade. The Internet is increasingly central to questions about whether and how existing and planned trade agreements will help or hurt our chances for economic growth.
Before Thanksgiving, I testified before the Congressional Executive Commission on China on how China’s Internet filtering and censorship are causing real economic harm, and how these practices likely violate some of China’s formal trade commitments under the World Trade Organization. During my testimony I offered some examples. In repeatedly blocking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Flickr and YouTubeand others, China is singling out U.S. companies for censorship even when Chinese-owned services carry some of the same, supposedly “banned” content. This double standard strongly suggests that protectionism is one of the motivations for that country’s aggressive censorship. China has even gone so far as to manipulate its “Great Firewall” to redirect URL’s of U.S. search engines to China’s leading search engine Baidu instead.
