This post is not about foreign policy, it’s about business, but it’s still about the U.S. role in the world. My question today is: Do American companies have a responsibility to be representatives of American values when they operate internationally? This question has often been posed in relation to pollution and environmental protection, labor practices, corruption and the rule of law. I’m thinking about this question today in the general context of promoting the basic values of freedom and liberty, and specifically in terms of this report in The New York Times today about China requiring new computers sold in that country to have censorship technology pre-installed. Of course, they don’t call it that, they call it an ant-pornography initiative, and who can argue against that, until one realizes that the same software that blocks pornography can also block other, more politically sensitive sites as well. As this news report puts it:

Although porn sites are initially targeted, the software could be used to block other Web sites, too, including those based on keywords rather than specific Web addresses [...] China, which has the world’s largest population of Internet users at more than 250 million, also has one of the world’s tightest controls over the Internet. Through such mechanisms as network-level filters installed at the nation’s Internet service providers, the government routinely blocks political sites, especially ones it considers socially destabilizing such as sites that challenge the ruling Communist Party, promote democratic reform or advocate independence for Tibet.

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests that ended violently in 1989. Students in China today can’t read about the democracy movement in their textbooks, nor can they study this event on the internet, it has been effectively removed from history by Chinese censors. Perhaps I should note here that the Chinese government has good reasons for doing this, they are making difficult choices and balancing a desire for social order and stability with competing desires for increasing political and economic freedom. While we may hope that the long term trend is in favor of greater freedom, my concern is the role that U.S. companies take today in promoting or undermining freedom and liberty and thus influencing those long term trends.

How far should computer-makers Dell, of Round Rock, Texas, and Apple, of Cupertino, CA, go in promoting censorship in another country? How far should Cisco, of San Jose, CA, go in providing the network technology that allows for an almost totalitarian control of the internet in another country? How far should Google, of Mountain View, CA, go in removing certain words (like democracy) from searches in another country? When American companies say that they strive to be good corporate citizens, should we then ask, citizens of what country? Should U.S. companies birthed in freedom trade in the tools of repression?