Hypocrisy Keeps Other Firms From Doing as Google Did

Why is Google alone in its stand against China? "Bald hypocrisy," argues Richard Cohen in the Washington Post. America wanted to believe the Internet would change China. Bill Clinton, no fool, once said that China's attempt to censor the Web was as fruitless as nailing Jell-O to the wall. Well, writes Cohen, "the Jell-O's on the wall." China censors with impunity, yet only Google walks away.

American firms may extol their neutrality, but they choose to work in a country where dissent is treason and 'universal' rights don't hold. Perhaps, eventually, the Internet will change this. Until then, Google's absence reminds us that the real price of doing business in the Middle Kingdom "is not its overvalued currency but its undervalued human rights."

(More China stories.)