A week after Google's Sergey Brin went on the record about his company's involvement in China during Google's recent analyst conference, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang has done the same. Like Brin, Yang has chosen a professionally oriented forum --in this case the Thomas Weisel Partners Internet and Telecom Conference in San Francisco-- to address the issue. And, like Brin, he has addressed it in a fairly cursory fashion that stays within the boundaries drawn by the companies during the congressional hearings convened last month. CNET reports:
Yahoo executives feel "horrible" about political arrests of Internet users in China but believe it's better to operate in that market and cooperate with authorities than not be there at all, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang said Wednesday.

"It is more important for us to participate, not only for economic reasons, but to be able to" help shape where the industry is going, Yang said during a question-and-answer session at the Thomas Weisel Partners Internet and Telecom Conference in San Francisco.

"You have to balance the risk of not participating," he said. "And people don't realize that being in the market every day there, and being on the ground, we are seeing changes, on the whole, for the positive."

Yahoo and the other top U.S.-based search engines have come under fire for their practice of cooperating with the Chinese government in censoring information online. Yahoo has been accused of providing evidence to Chinese authorities that led to the imprisonment of two Chinese Internet users, including a journalist who was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The arrests "are never things you go home and feel good about," Yang said. "We feel horrible about that...We have no way of preventing that beforehand....If you want to do business there you have to comply."

Later in the day, during a question-and-answer session at the JMP Securities Research Conference, he reiterated many of the same statements and added that Yahoo executives have raised the issue with the Chinese government. "We feel the government needs to work on it as a trade issue."

Internet companies have to deal with regulations that affect their business in other countries as well, even in the U.S., which has the Patriot Act, he said. "There is no 100 percent clean, no matter what country you're talking about."
I wrote in February that it was going to be important to see some leadership from the top of the companies involved. While I am pleased to see that both Brin and Yang have gone on the record about their China operations, I am disappointed by the lack of depth in the comments. I realize that both executives are probably following paths tightly circumscribed by their general counsels and communications directors (and I'd probably be counseling something similar if I was in the position of providing such guidance, I was aware that the company's comments were being scrutinized in both the US and China, and my job was on the line). I also think that, in the current climate, it is very dangerous to equate US practices with Chinese ones (as egregious as I think some current US practices are). There may be no 100% clean country, but there are some pretty clear divisions which Yang should beware of invoking as part of his defense. Note that I don't have the full context for that quote, but neither does any other reader of this story, not all of whom will approach it in as analytical a framework as I do.

In the end, I see little new in the statements made so far, and that disappoints the industry observer/China resident/American in me (which descriptor may put me in a smallish crowd). In future, perhaps when the winds are not blowing so hot over this issue, I hope one of these executives sits down with a good journalist for an in-depth discussion on these issues, including the role companies like Yahoo and Google should (or shouldn't) play in advancing American values and human rights, the relationship between technology and human rights, the considerations they weigh when operating in other countries, and the challenges yet to come as the industry continues to develop. That would be an article worth reading.