So is “human rights in China” and “brainwashing” and “withdrawing from the Communist Party"… the list goes on of course. China has censored many of these types of phrases from China’s largest internet search engine, Baidu.com, according to this New Tang Dynasty Television article. The Baidu search engine is not the only one that has caved to Chinese government pressure, other companies such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google that have benefited immensely from freedom of expression also censor a significant amount of content on the internet in China.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has reported that Myanmar (Burma), Iran, Syria, and Cuba are the top countries where the internet is highly restricted and where bloggers and independent journalists face steep punishment for expressing themselves. Though they say that China has the world’s “most comprehensive online censorship program” and imprison many writers as well. Apparently, the internet companies that work with the Chinese government do not have the courage to defend the very freedom that made them successful in the first place, the freedom to post anything on the internet.

Those who facilitate tyranny in the world are partly responsible for their atrocities. These companies are responsible for aiding in the totalitarian mind-control of a large section of mankind. The least that these companies could do is start de-censoring certain content by degrees or help develop ways around such censorship. Yes, I suggest that these companies undermine their own censorship efforts, otherwise we will be creating a blueprint for a world where governments around the world can limit the greatest hope for freedom around the world: the Internet.

-AG