Foreign Firms Resent Beijing’s Many Rules

(New York Times – Keith Bradsher and David Barboza)

Google is far from alone among Western companies in its growing unhappiness with Chinese government policies, although it is highly unusual in threatening to pull out of the country entirely in protest. Western companies contend that they face a lengthening list of obstacles to doing business in China, from “buy Chinese” government procurement policies and growing restrictions on foreign investments to widespread counterfeiting.

These barriers generally fall into two broad categories. Some relate to China’s desire to maintain control over internal dissent. Others involve its efforts to become internationally competitive in as many industries as possible.

Google, which complained Tuesday about attacks on its computers from China and called for an end to censorship of search results, is not the first company to run afoul of the Communist Party’s fears of social instability and strong desire to keep tabs on dissidents and limit freedom of expression. China has long restricted the sale of foreign movies, books, songs and other media, and it continues to do so while appealing a World Trade Organization ruling in August that these policies violate China’s legally binding commitments to the international free trade system. More recently, China has sought to strengthen its domestic encryption industry – for which the government has easy access to all the decryption codes – while withholding the government certification that foreign-owned encryption companies in China need to sell their products to many users. Read more here.