MORAL PYGMY
When internet search firm Yahoo provided the repressive nation of China, where it does profitable business to the tune of million$, with the means of tracking down resident on-line critics of the Communist regime, resulting in the prolonged detention and beating of at least one dissident, an American resident with family in his district, U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos (http://tinyurl.com/2tkeca), a Holocaust survivor, convened a congressional hearing during which he famously told Yahoo founder Jerry Yang that he was a "moral pygmy," for handing over the means to track down and persecute opponents of the way China is.
One could view Yahoo's behavior, with policies set by Yang and his board, as the moral equivalent of the person who gave up Anne Frank to the Nazis, and her death, along with the lives of her family, in a concentration camp. The notoriety stemming from the charge, "moral pygmy" could not have been comfortable for Yang who later settled with the man's family.
Lantos, 89, a former teacher, who represented San Mateo county and parts of San Francisco, recently died of cancer. His critique of Yang was repeated in Lantos's obituaries.
China, which is hosting the next summer Olympics in August, always one of the world's premier political events, has for years been investing heavily in Africa where grow oil and food. However, China has been doing precious little to stem the genocide, lawlessness, and violence, occurring in Darfur, Sudan.
As a result, Stephen Spielberg, the reigning Hollywood producer and director, who has produced Jaws, ET, and Schindler's List, a film about the Holocaust, among many others, has resigned in protest from China's Olympic advisory committee. This resulted in considerable news coverage and commentary. Had Spielberg not demonstrated his protest in a manner sure to attract widespread attention, he could justly have been accused himself of being a moral pygmy, a distinction he would have hated. So he resigned, and the world took note. So, apparently, did China, whose controlled press began to attack Spielberg.
However, a few weeks after Spielberg's dramatic call to attention, I read that China was taking steps to help stem the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.
I was amazed, but not exactly surprised.
As noted, China has the Olympics coming up soon. It has just completed building the world's grandest airport terminal in Beijing to greet the visitors from all over the world to the economically resurgent country which has grown from coolies planting rice under a Communist umbrella, the kind that keeps the sun from shining on a country. China has gone from rice grower to the world's largest manufacturer, with skyscrapers jutting up on former pig farms.
China has come a long way in the past several decades and wants to put its best face forward to the foreign visitors to the games and the whole world watching on TV. Assuming a colonialist policy abroad in Africa, in which China invests money but withdraws all profit, with little or none going towards bringing its economic colony, essentially, into the modern world, will never do. So China appears to have heard Spielberg's foul-whistle and realizes that the world watches to see its response.
The credit goes to Spielberg for so deftly calling attention to a blind spot among the people who had borrowed his prestige in order to aggrandize their authoritarian, undemocratic, rule.
Good for Spielberg, who, by his example, teaches what it's like to be an American who can make a difference in the world, and takes the chance confronted with a problem. He could've ducked, dissembled, or hidden, but he stuck his neck out and sacrificed a prominent position with China, a position which could have been lucrative, as Spielberg probably sells a lot of movies in the People's Republic, population over a billion pairs of eyes. The risk he took was in earning the disfavor of the governing authorities which have the power to control Spielberg's distribution network, and to police the counterfeiting and selling of his products. Yet he took this risk and the result has been, not the destruction of Spielberg in China, but a change in China's human rights policy.
That's big.
Very big.
The S.F. Chronicle article on Lantos's death which contains the remark he made to Jerry Yang is at:
http://tinyurl.com/2v8u88
An article from Australia noting China's insistence that its foreign policy in Darfur is parallel to that of the West is at:
http://tinyurl.com/398r26
A S.F. Chronicle article noting that there has, in fact, been a backlash against Spielberg in China, is at:
http://tinyurl.com/2t6hgh
An article from the S.F. Chronicle dated Feb. 22, 2008 by Verne Kopytoff provides an overview of the Yang-Yahoo controversy in which the corporation burns the dissident and Lantos calls Yang and his corporate counsel moral pygmies, appears below.
Yahoo pleads for Chinese dissidents
Friday, February 22, 2008
Yahoo Inc. has urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to help secure the release of Chinese dissidents, including two who were jailed after the Web portal gave authorities information about their online activities.
Jerry Yang, the Sunnyvale company's chief executive, sent a letter to Rice Thursday in what is his latest effort to restore Yahoo's image following withering criticism by human rights groups about its cooperation with Chinese investigators.
The letter called on the U.S. government to pressure Chinese officials, using the Olympic Games in Beijing as leverage.
"We know we have an important role to play in advocating for the release of these political dissidents," Yang wrote. "We are also aware of the limits of private American companies engaging in foreign policy."
Yahoo sent the letter to Rice in prelude to her trip to Asia, which starts Saturday and will include a stop in China. A State Department spokeswoman said agendas for her meetings have yet to be set, although much of the talks will focus on North Korea's nuclear arms program.
She could not comment on Yahoo's letter because Rice had yet to receive it.
Three months ago, Yahoo settled a suit in federal court by two jailed Chinese journalists and their families who had accused the company of illegally turning over e-mail records and other information to Chinese law enforcement.
Wang Xiaoning, an editor of several journals espousing political reform, was arrested in 2002, and later sentenced to 10 years in prison for his pro-democracy writings. Shi Tao, another journalist, was arrested in 2004 and sentenced to 10 years for using his Yahoo e-mail account to send word of a media crackdown to a pro-democracy group.
Yang wrote in the letter to Rice that "Yahoo deeply regrets the circumstances that led to the imprisonment of individuals in China." He added that demands for information by authorities there places foreign Internet firms in a difficult position and that his company was compelled to comply under Chinese law.
Yang asked that the State Department help win the release of Wang and Shi, along with other dissidents who have used the Internet to disseminate their views. Human rights groups say Yahoo played a role in providing information that led to the arrests of at least two other people.
Lawmakers, in particular, have excoriated Yahoo for its cooperation
with Chinese authorities, prompting the late Rep. Tom Lantos, D-San
Mateo, to call Yang and Michael Callahan, Yahoo's general counsel,
moral pygmies during a congressional hearing last year. [Emphasis added]
The hearing was to examine testimony Callahan previously provided, in which he said he knew nothing about why Chinese authorities were seeking information about Shi. In fact, the subpoena-like document the authorities provided said the case involved someone providing state secrets to foreign entities, a description that human rights groups said is widely known to be used in cases involving political dissidents.
Yahoo no longer does business in China, selling its operations there in 2005 to a local company, Alibaba. However, Yahoo owns a major stake in Alibaba and Yang sits on that company's board.
Lucie Morillon, the Washington representative with Reporters Without Borders, a human rights group, said that she appreciates Yang's concern about political prisoners in China but that he could do more to protect dissidents from being jailed by exercising more control over the company's Chinese partner.
"Asking the U.S. government to do everything to release people - that's great," Morillon said. "But why not attack the problem at the beginning?"
E-mail Verne Kopytoff at vkopytoff@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/22/BU95V6LQG.DTL
This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Comments