China can allow access to Google whenever they choose.
Edit: Do you honestly think that once the Chinese government has some leverage over Google (because they now make a portion of their revenue from the Chinese market) they wouldn't use that to get additional concessions?
As an example, Chinese citizens can still access Google if they can connect through an outside VPN. Google may be able to identify such users through cookies, reCaptcha or another Google tracking technology. What if China asked Google to censor results for Chinese users using VPNs too?
The only information that the Chinese government would have access to from Google is info they already have from Baidu.
If it's not worse than the status quo, then it's not a negative impact of bringing Dragonfly to China.
Maybe people unaware of DragonFly will try riskier search phrases on Google than on Baidu.
And the problem gets especially bad if they find whatever they were looking for. As in this case the state has evidence on consuming "politically dangerous" material. (Not that they can't fake it otherwise.)
By abdicating that responsibility to an actor like Baidu, who is much more aligned with the Chinese government, they make the problem worse. By agreeing to their demands, and then doing the shittiest job possible of complying, they actually have a lot more power and influence.
> Edit: Do you honestly think that once the Chinese government has some leverage over Google (because they now make a portion of their revenue from the Chinese market) they wouldn't use that to get additional concessions?
Yes, but that's a two way street. Chinese citizens will come to rely on Google search, and will be unhappy when its taken away. So both sides become enmeshed.
This is an argument akin to "I'm joining the system so I can change it from the inside".
This can work, but you need leverage. What leverage would Google have over the Chinese government in this case? Say what you will about the current Chinese leadership, but they're not stupid and they know what Google is capable of. If they think Google is dragging they're feet why wouldn't they just block Google again?
Why would they? They're out to make money and they'll make much less money by making enemies with the CCP.
We can also look at history: American companies have no problem doing business with authoritarian and repressive regimes. Sometimes they even prop them up.
And how can companies establish a major presence in China unless they are aligned with the Chinese government?
If a lot of companies decided to refuse to follow China's oppressive methods (and thus making life slightly worse for some of the people of china) it might slightly push the residents of china towards revolting and gaining more freedom.
This is all theoretical of course, I doubt that anything like that could happen in real life.
Compared to that, continuing to enjoy the greatest rise in living standards in human history doesn't look half bad.
There's always a human cost to revolutions. That doesn't justify supporting and perpetuating one of the biggest threats to freedom in the entire world.
This is extremely poor reasoning. An overall "bad" thing does not become "good" or justified because it has improved conditions in some way. By the very same token, slavery has both good sides and bad sides, and by your dismissive style, we ought not to consider the bad sides - the slaves should continue to enjoy the greatest rise in living standards (having food and shelter provided by the master) and the slave owners should continue to enjoy the greatest rise in profits in human history - isn't it clear that everyone wins?
What is even more ironic is that for China, a state which claims to be Communist, is being supported by your argument which was specifically repudiated by Marx in criticizing Proudhon for exactly the view you are expounding!
>The good side and the bad side, the advantages and drawbacks, taken together form for M. Proudhon the contradiction in every economic category. The problem to be solved: to keep the good side, while eliminating the bad. Slavery is an economic category like any other. Thus it also has its two sides. Let us leave alone the bad side and talk about the good side of slavery. Needless to say, we are dealing only with direct slavery, with Negro slavery in Surinam, in Brazil, in the Southern States of North America.
>Without slavery North America, the most progressive of countries, would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe North America off the map of the world, and you will have anarchy – the complete decay of modern commerce and civilization. Cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations.
>What would M. Proudhon do to save slavery? He would formulate the problem thus: preserve the good side of this economic category, eliminate the bad.
I will also note that your immediate dismissal of revolution is historically shaky at best, as great advances in history and freedom were gained from revolution - of both country (France, America, many wars of independence, Germany) and economy (the bourgeois revolution in means of production). Just remember this:
>If money, according to Augier, “comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,” capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.
It's pretty clear that the question is whether a thing is good on balance. We all agree slavery is bad on balance. China, on the other hand, who has authoritarian policies, but has simultaneously lifted billions of people out of extreme poverty, is much more mixed.
In any case this reasoning is flawed -- the correct analogy to "China has authoritarian policies but pulled billions of people out of poverty" would be "the United States had slavery but populated a continent while creating wealth for millions of people". So the story of slavery is "much more mixed".
Sure, call it what you want. I'm no fan of the Chinese government.
> In any case this reasoning is flawed -- the correct analogy to "China has authoritarian policies but pulled billions of people out of poverty" would be "the United States had slavery but populated a continent while creating wealth for millions of people". So the story of slavery is "much more mixed".
So, should the cotton gin makers of their day not have sold cotton gins to the plantation owners? What good would that have done?