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By Andrew Newton on 13 Jan, 2010 - 03:32 UTC

Well, here is confirmation that Hillary Clinton's State Department was briefed on Google's delivery of an ultimatum to China over censorship.

 

The text of the statement:

 

Statement on Google Operations in China

 

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Secretary of State Washington, DC

January 12, 2010

 

We have been briefed by Google on these allegations, which raise very serious concerns and questions. We look to the Chinese government for an explanation. The ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy. I will be giving an address next week on the centrality of internet freedom in the 21st century, and we will have further comment on this matter as the facts become clear.

 

There is no indication as to whether they were briefed before the move or subsequently, but for reasons given in my earlier post I think the State Department knew perfectly well this move was coming. The allegations against China that the statement refers to are unlikely to be new to any degree, and certainly would have been known at the time of Clinton's meeting with Eric Schmidt and other CEOs last week.

 

Such meetings I am sure happen regularly with various industry heads. My point is simply that this move by Google has to be seen as a private firm coordinating its foreign policy with that of US national foreign policy. Not a new idea (think oil companies for starters) but interesting in an era of radical transparency, corporate responsibility and "Do no evil". It's also intriguing here because the move is not - as far as I can see - the kind of cynical, manipulative coordination between private and public foreign policies that we saw in advance of the Iraq war (or again, earlier oil interests), but a development that is at least hooked on a genuine issue of human rights (privacy, speech).

 

For those suggesting this is simply Google scuppering other tech companies in China because its own position is weak, I think it highly unlikely. If my main argument is correct, this move either arose out of or would have at least been mooted at the meeting of industry leaders with Clinton last week. They all face the same problems in China. Perhaps it was agreed that Google.cn would be sacrified as shot across China's bow precisely because it had the weakest commerical position of those present. If alternatively Microsoft had taken this position, what are you holding in reserve as a threat? Google.cn?

 

 

In a timely follow up to my post yesterday on whether companies need a foreign policy, Google has effectively delivered an ultimatum to China.


The ultimatum essentially says "let us provide uncensored Google in China or we will shut Google.cn". Naturally, no one expects China to accede to Google's wishes.


The background an a good analysis are provided by Imagethief here.


Imagethief does not mention the meeting between Internet business leaders and Hillary Clinton last week, and I cannot help but feel that the timing of this announcement is linked to that meeting even if there are broader events leading up to this. Eric Schmidt is simply too close to the Obama administration to do this on the fly. Certainly to China it will look like it is, and if there is one thing that was acknowledged in that meeting it is that any stand US companies take in relation to human rights in China will be viewed by China as a proxy move by the US.


While Imagethief notes and the Wall Street Journal implies that Google's eventual withdrawal from China on human rights grounds makes it really difficult for Microsoft to remain, I would be very surprised if Microsoft, the State Department and others did not already know of the move before Google dropped today's bombshell.


 

I was struck on reading about a Scientific American study that rates China's Three Gorges dam as one of the world's 10 best renewables projects.

 

I have no doubt that in terms of reduced-CO2 emitting energy sources this project deserves the accolade. But the Three Gorges project is infamous for the displacement of over 4 million people, as well as other forms of environmental damage.

 

There was perhaps no reason why the Three Gorges project should inevitably have led to rights violations. Perhaps it could have been pursued more slowly and on a slightly less ambitous scale and left rights intact. I don't know.

 

But clearly hard choices between different people's rights are going to have to be made and their conclusion pushed through with vigour. The not-in-my-back-yard attitude that is slowing installation of wind turbines across Europe has to be set against the fact that some 20 million people worldwide have been displaced from their homes by action of climate change. That - as the article points out - is slightly less than the population of Australia.

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The Japanese car manufacturer Nissan aims to mass produce electric cars by 2012 with an emphasis on affordability.

 

It will be releasing its first electric car in Japen later this summer, and in the USA in 2010. The target date for global mass production is 2012.

 

Nissan is Japan's third biggest car maker. Their EV prototype is discussed in more detail here.

 

The race is clearly on to produce fully electric cars for the mass market, with Tesla, Toyota and China's Dongfeng Motor Corp all pushing ahead with plans.

Negotiations between the US and China on a new regime to combat climate change are sticking on the question of technology transfer.

 

Developing countries have had a relatively small role historically in producing carbon emissions as their industrial revolution was relatively recent (and continuing), but it is feared they will soon make up for lost time.

 

The general dynamic of talks  between developed and developing countries is expected to be that developing countries will agree to emissions constraints only in return for the transfer of clean technologies to support sustainable high economic growth.

 

The US, however, is balking at aggravating already poor balance of trade with China.

 

According to AFP:

 

"The US House of Representatives this month unanimously voted to make it US policy to prevent the Copenhagen treaty from "weakening" US intellectual property rights on a wind, solar and other eco-friendly technologies."

In a rare move, the Chinese environmental regulator has halted the development of a string of hydropower stations in the upper Yangtze.

 

The hyrdopower developments were ruled illegal as environmental permissions had not been sought.

 

The developments were being implemented by China's two largest power companies.

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Starting in 2010, India will begin incorporating measures of natural resource depletion within their measure of national income.

 

According to the Economic Times, an official from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation stated that the calculation would incorporate:

 

"the cost of recovery of polluted resources, which has to be used as a deflator to real GDP. Our green GDP may be significantly lower than real GDP as economic growth is resource-intensive".

 

China tried to measure a green GDP in 2004, but abandoned it after it triggered infighting between government departments and the political establishment. Environmental degradation had lowered GDP into the red.

 

Over $140bn (£85bn) was invested in solar, wind and other clean energy solutions, compared with $110bn for gas and coal electricity generation.

 

China,India and other developing nations claimed the prize for the biggest growth in renewables investment, according to the United Nations figures.

Bonn climate talks off to rocky start
By Andrew Newton on 03 Jun, 2009 - 06:00 UTC

India and China are objecting to the text drafted as a starting point for the first of five meetings preparing for the December meeting in Copenhagen.

 

The Copenhagen agreement will pick up where the Kyoto treaty left off. This time the US is taking a lead role in negotiations.

 

India and China are objecting to the fact that the starting is text does not replicate the output of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Bali Action Plan (BAP).

 

Among issues of substantive concern are "the merging of the key issues of direct financial support and technical transfer from rich countries to poor ones", according to the LiveMint report.

 

Developing countries including India are concerned that an equitable allocation of atmospheric resource should be linked to any discussions about stabilization of emissions or temperature rise.

The aim is to enable solar to compete more easily with traditional energy sources such as coal - a big contributor to carbon emissions.

 

This kind of intervention makes more sense to me than the subsidies received by fossil fuel energy in the US, Europe, Australia and elsewhere.

In the final months of the Bush administration two bipartisan diplomatic missions headed to Beijing to negotiate a US-China deal on carbon emissions.

 

According to the Guardian's report, John Holdren, now the White House science adviser, and other members of the current administration were involved in the initiative.

 

A memorandum of understanding has been drafted but not yet signed. Bill Chandler, director of the energy and climate programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is confident a deal can be struck by the fall.

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