Yahoo! goes to Washington
It’s strange. I really was, at one time, an idealist. Apparently no longer, because the treatment our company has received has really pissed me off.
Yes, it absolutely sucks that the Chinese government puts journalists and activists in jail. I wish they wouldn’t. Most of us wish they wouldn’t. But they do, and the only pressure to make them stop will be political. Telling businesses to do what our government cannot or will not is absurd, and we shouldn’t put up with it.
American corporations do business in China. Our shareholders want us to and we want to, because the country represents the single largest market opportunity in the world. In order to do business there, a company must abide by Chinese law. Otherwise, that company would get shut out. I hate to admit this, but companies operate within the law to generate value for shareholders. Any moral or socially-responsible agenda a company may pursue beyond that is wonderful, but that’s the baseline – othewise the company ceases to exist.
If a single company decided to take a stand and break the law in China on moral grounds, its competitors would happily eat its lunch. So don’t expect us to do it. If the US government wants US companies to refuse to abide by Chinese law while doing business in China, then it needs to legislate that. And even if our government would pass such legislation (they won’t), the rest of the world wouldn’t necessarily follow suit. So then American business would have pulled out of a huge, huge market, leaving it to the rest of the world to swoop in and make enormous profits for generations to come. That seems a bit stupid to me.
Simply put, this isn’t an easy one, and I hate that Yahoo! was singled out and held up to ridicule.
Note: this is my opinion and mine alone, NOT an opinion from Yahoo!.
