Han Dongping

Goodbye, Google

By Han Dongping ( chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-04-06 15:44

Editor's note: The world is composed of different nations with different ways of dealing with things and different understandings of these handlings. So too with the ways of managing information flow. Google and Western countries should learn to respect those differences.

Google has finally decided to leave Chinese mainland for real. I think that Google has made the right decision for itself. Companies like individuals in this world have to make many decisions based on what they think it is best for them at the time.

Google made the decision to come to China because it calculated that it would be able to make good money in China, like any other foreign businesses that made the decisions to come to China. After a few years of operation in China, Google has found out that it had not been able to make as much money as it expected, and decided to leave. Any sensible companies would have made the same decision. It is a business decision. That is all.

I am writing to wish Google all the good luck in the world, and to thank Google's management for providing such an important moment of education for the Chinese government and the Chinese people and for the whole world. The Chinese people and Chinese government will be more prepared to deal with outside pressures and threat after the Google incident. They will be able to see more clearly what some countries and companies tried to do to China and the Chinese people by using their connections with their governments and their control of public opinions in the world.

I think that the whole world is being educated about the real nature of politics and free market economy in our world. Our world will become more enlightened because of Google's performance. For that reason, it deserves all the thanks in this world.

For good or for worse, our world has become more globalized today. Companies and individuals are travelling around the world for opportunities. I, a farm boy in the Chinese countryside many decades ago, end up teaching history and political science in the United States. Some of my students in the US who grew up knowing very little about China, end up teaching English in my hometown in China, partly through studying with me.

By studying and teaching in the US, I have learned a great deal about the US and about our world. The knowledge I learned in the US enabled me to see my motherland and the world in very different light. I am very confidant that my American students who travelled to China with me in the past, and who are teaching and living in China, like myself, will be able to learn more about China and about our world, and with their newly acquired knowledge will be able to see their motherland and the world in different lights as well.

Teaching and living in the US for more than twenty some years I acquired more wisdom. What is wisdom in this world? For me, the most important wisdom in this world is the ability to see things in different perspectives and in different lights, and is the ability to see things beneath the surface and the ability to see what other people do not see. Most of my American students like my teaching because I can provide them with a different way of seeing things about our world. Some of my students become wiser because they learned to look on things in different lights. Some of them did not.

One of my former students, to whom I served as his academic advisor, whom I helped get the first teaching job in China, and to whom I wrote strong recommendation letters to get him into prestigious graduate program in China, was so upset after reading my articles in China Daily that he thought I was anti-America and wrote a letter to my president in an effort to get me fired. He threatened my president that if I was not fired he would never give any money to the college. The president shared his letter with me and the chairman of my department. My department chair advised my president not to share the letter with me because he feared that I would be hurt by the student's letter after I did so much for that student.

In fact, I felt more sorrow than anger for that student of mine. He apparently has not learned a thing about his own motherland yet. I shared his letter, together with other letters written to me and my president demanding that I be fired with all my current students for the purpose of education.

I want to thank my former student and all others who wrote to me and my president to demand my removal from the college. You have provided me and my students with some best teaching moments in my teaching career. The examples you served enabled me and my students to see things in a different perspective, and I hope my students and myself will be wiser for that. To you all, I also give my best wishes in this world.

Many people tried to make a big deal out of Google's decision to leave China. They want to turn a business decision into a big political fight. They want to use it as tools to put pressure on China and Chinese people.

I want to applaud the Chinese government's courage to stand the ground and Chinese people's ability to resist the blackmail. Chinese government, like any other independent government in this world, has the right to censor information which it considers to be harmful for China's stability and unity and wellbeing of the Chinese people.

Anybody who is naive to think that there are governments in this world which do not censor information needs to grow up and face the reality. When I was young and inexperienced, I used to imagine that some countries in this world do not censor information. That was my childhood imagination. I have grown up since then.

I have learned over the years that different countries have different ways of doing things. It is not right or wrong. It is simply different. As human beings, we must learn to respect each other's differences and different ways of doing things. That is the only way human beings will be able to survive in this world.

The opinions expressed are author's own.