Yahoo, Chinese police, and a jailed journalist
The role of the US Internet firm Yahoo in helping Chinese security officials to finger a journalist sentenced to 10 years for e-mailing "state secrets" is filtering into mainland China. The revelation reinforces a conviction among many Chinese "netizens" that there is no place security forces can't find them.
Yet if netizen reaction in China is resignation, the story of Yahoo's complicity in the arrest of Shi Tao, a journalist with the Contemporary Trade News in Hunan, brought a spontaneous uproar among Western human rights and business watchdogs.
They say the case of Mr. Shi, convicted for e-mailing comments made in a newspaper staff meeting to a democracy group in New York, and whose IP Internet address was given to Chinese officials by Yahoo - highlights both a deepening US corporate acceptance of illiberal Chinese laws and a little-noticed rise in the jailing of journalists in China over the past two years.
Given that Bill Clinton will be in Hangzhou on Sept. 10 for a "China Internet Summit" hosted by Yahoo's Chinese partner Alibaba.com, rights groups are urging the former president to raise Shi's case and advocate a freer flow of information.
Yahoo Holdings Ltd. in Hong Kong worked with mainland Chinese police to find Shi, according to court documents. So far, Yahoo has refused to offer details beyond this statement released Thursday: "Yahoo must ensure that its local country sites must operate within the [local] laws, regulations, and customs."
When queried whether Yahoo gave Shi's address to police after a court request, or whether police simply phoned Yahoo offices on the mainland to get help, Hong Kong Yahoo marketing spokesperson Pauline Wong said she was "unable to give out any information like that."
"For Yahoo to say it only must abide by 'customs,' well, that opens the floodgate," says Nicolas Becquelin of Human Rights In China. "Anything can be called a custom."
Legally, Yahoo is not obligated to cooperate with Chinese police. Yet in practice it may have to. Unanswered so far are the terms by which Yahoo Hong Kong, operating under the "one country two systems" formula that allows autonomy, was forced to conform to Chinese requests, despite its Hong Kong registry.
The Shi case also highlights vast differences in the Western and Chinese definitions of "state secrets." Beijing includes information on statistics, child labor laws, police behavior, strikes, and riots.
"The content of state secrets in Chinese law ... goes far beyond ordinary definitions of national security to encompass, in fact, most information handled by the government," says Mr. Becquelin.
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