Google vs China: Damaging Diplomacy

The Western media continues to portray Google as somewhat of a hero for abandoning its facilities in mainland China and moving its services offshore. Washington Post op-ed columnist Richard Cohen praised the search giant in his March 30 article for walking away from China’s Internet censorship policies and its egregious human rights record. The BBC also chided China, reporting on March 23 that Google’s move “is a major blow to China’s international image.” While Google’s move might have highlighted its tough stance against censored search results, its undiplomatic handling of this event threatens to alter world affairs and U.S.-Chinese diplomatic relations.

Google, a corporation that benefits from significant global popularity and enjoys widespread brand recognition, carries with it the responsibility to represent the United States and its values across the globe. Google’s worldwide reputation is among the likes of McDonald’s and Starbucks and it has become a symbol associated with Western modernism, liberalism, and capitalism. American businesses that operate on foreign soil are essentially unofficial diplomats of the United States. Google’s presence in China should help improve diplomatic and economic relations with that country, and not inflame sensitive ties.

Instead, Google has mired itself in a he-said-she-said conflict, angering and isolating both the Chinese people and the Chinese government. Google recently publicly announced its frustration with the relentless Internet security breaches and its irritation with China’s Internet censorship laws. While Google did not explicitly accuse the Chinese government of the recent hacks into journalists’ and democracy advocates’ e-mail accounts, its action clearly pointed the finger at Beijing. Such implications could potentially damage U.S.-China relations in a diplomatic arena where cooperation on key issues is crucial. After all, China is a major holder of the U.S. national debt, has the world’s third largest economy, and some scholars at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace predict that China is poised to takeover as the world’s next superpower.

China adamantly defended itself repeatedly against accusations, most recently on March 31 when the google.cn site became temporarily unavailable. Chinese government officials called Google “totally wrong,” and blamed the company for “politicizing” the event. Now, according to a Los Angeles Times report, China could potentially block the search engine permanently, which would deliver a huge economic blow to Google.

What’s interesting is that Google did not seem to have a problem with Internet censorship in 2006, when it launched its google.cn site and quietly obliged to China’s censorship restrictions. Let’s think about this. The population of China is 1.3 billion.It has 360 million Internet users. Google reports that 97% of its revenue comes from advertising. From a business standpoint, China is practically a goldmine for advertising and marketing. It’s not hard to see that Google’s executives had their eyes set on advertising and marketing dollars and were less concerned with upholding their mission to protect the free flow of information on the Internet.

Google is both an ambassador of the United States and a multi-national corporation operating with profit in mind. Reconciling both identities requires a delicate balancing act. Respecting and appreciating the laws, culture, and values of its host country should be an inherent mission in each American business abroad, and not just to be observed when it’s convenient. Google’s withdrawal from China did not have to be as abrupt, considering its history. An ambassador should always remember that diplomacy is the first option.

I'm taking two classes this semester at Johns Hopkins - International Public Diplomacy and Public Relations in the Age of Digital Influence. This weekend, I've been immersed in Emanuel Rosen's book, "The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited," in what seems like the first moment of quiet I've had to just read and think in ages (thanks, blizzard!). I realized that a concept was beginning to emerge that was important, if not vital, to success in both public diplomacy and social media strategies: listening. Yep, listening.

A concept that seems so native to us is so difficult to put into practice. Listening is the silver lining of the successful case-studies that Rosen presents; the companies that listened to what their audiences wanted, whether it was to solve their grievances, answer questions, or even just to provide a way to easily contact the organization, were successful in their attempts to control the message they wanted to deliver to their audiences. Listening is the elusive task that any corporation wanting to make the most of word of mouth marketing or take advantage of the social media groundswell needs to master in order to craft a successful marketing strategy. But no one really does it.

My organization is a prime example of this. We set up both Facebook and Twitter pages just to be "involved" in the social media groundswell, without really listening to what our users wanted from us on these networks. How were these networks different from our website? Would they offer new, original content, or would they simply serve to expand the reach of the content on our website? Did our users expect us to talk to them, to engage them, to interact act with them, or to just pump out information? What did they want to know about us? Was social media important enough for us to allocate staff time and resources to it? Not having the answers to these questions is costing us to miss a prime opportunity to generate buzz around our organization using these incredibly powerful tools, especially in light of our new headquarters project that is beginning to become a visible part of the national mall's landscape.

Because of this, we can't quite call our presence on these sites a success yet, because we haven't even begun to do the initial listening and research. Stephen Colbert, the host of this year's Grammy's, asked his daughter several times during the show, "am I cool now?" She kept shaking her head. And I keep shaking mine because just having a presence on these sites, just like being present at the Grammy's, does in no way make us "cool." We have to actually do something - interact, become part of the the community, and give our users what they're looking for, just like how an artist at the Grammy's who performs something or wins something engages audiences and gives them something to talk about, to have a successful presence.

Similarly, listening is a vital, yet underused tool in public diplomacy. So many campaigns fail because they don't address what people want, or don't answer the questions people are looking for. Take the State Department's failed Shared Values campaign, for example. The undersecretary of public diplomacy commissioned a series of videos showing Muslims happily living in America. The videos were shown to Muslim audiences abroad in an effort to help combat growing anti-American sentiment. In the end, the campaign was deemed a failure. Anti-American sentiment was growing out of a dislike of U.S. foreign policies, and not out of a dislike of American culture or Muslims living in America. State department officials had failed to listen, and therefore, failed to address the root of a growing international problem.

Listening is essential to any marketing strategy. And because the Internet is identified as an important facilitator of buzz, companies and organizations should use the myriad of tools available to them online - RSS readers, search engines, newsletters, forums, etc - to listen to what their audiences are discussing and how they are doing it before attempting a strategy. Listening will help organizations identify what triggers conversation, what people are reacting to positively and negatively, and what the best ways are to engage audiences online and will help ensure an organization's success. We also shouldn't forget what Rosen points out in his book: listening is just the first part of a process. It must be in tandem with some type of action for it to be successful.

New Semester, New Books!

I'm excited to take social media to another level this semester with my Public Relations in the Age of Digital Influence class at Hopkins.

Especially excited about the reading list, which includes books that I've wanted to read for a while now:

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (Hardcover – April 21, 2008)

Influence: Science and Practice (5th edition)
Robert B. Cialdini (Paperback – Aug 11, 2008)

The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited: Real-life Lessons in Word of Mouth Marketing
Emanuel Rosen (Paperback – Feb 24, 2009)

The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff
Clara Shih (Paperback – Mar 22, 2009)

Unleashing the Power of PR: A Contrarian’s Guide to Marketing and Communications
Mark Weiner (Hardcover – June 23, 2006)

Designing for the Social Web: Voices that Matter
Joshua Porter (Paperback – May 4, 2008)