"My personal commitment to improving global health started when I learned about health inequities. I remember reading the 1993 World Development Report. Every page screamed out that human life was not being as valued in the world at large as it should be." Those were comments made by Bill Gates speaking at the U.N. Secretary General's Luncheon in 2002 about the good work done by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the organisation he set up with his wife that has so far donated around US$6.3 billion to mainly health-related causes since 2000.
Gates' philanthropic good deeds to date and his attitude towards needless death and inequalities in society are admirable. Only the terminally cynical mind could imagine that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is simply the softer end of the Microsoft marketing machine -- designed to add a cuddly sheen to the hard-edge corporate face of the world's most powerful software company. But it's hard not to feel cheated when a supposed technical innovator talks of "human life was not being as valued in the world at large as it should be" while signing huge software deals with China --- a country that has imposed the death sentence for some Internet-related crimes and has one of the worst human rights records in the world.
Earlier this month, Microsoft signed a deal with the state-owned China National Computer and Software & Technology Service (CS&S), the country's largest domestic software development and systems integration firm, to co-develop products based on .Net and Office Systems platforms. This latest agreement deepens the company's relationship with China, which dates back to 2002 when Microsoft began donating money to educational projects and investing in joint ventures with local companies. In August this year Timothy Chen was given the newly created position as chief executive officer for Microsoft's greater China region -- responsible for supervising all of the company's business lines in the region.
Gates' frequent statements on the importance of world health seem strange set against China's handling of the SARS virus. The country was widely criticised for suppressing the true extent of the crisis to its people and the world after the illness was first reported in November last year.
Although China's new president, Hu Jintao, recently dismissed his health minister and the mayor of Beijing and then appeared on television to promise the public there would be no more lies, he has also threatened anyone who spreads the virus with the death penalty, according to the 20 May 2003 edition of China Daily online.
Microsoft is not alone in seeing the "opportunities" in China. Another tech heavyweight, Dell, also has substantial interests in China. "China's already become the second-largest market in the world. We're the largest company in China, after Legend," Michael Dell said in an interview with CNET News.com. Dell has also tried to position himself as a philanthropist by donating 2.7 million shares of stock in 1999 to create the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and claims to have a social conscience when it comes to how the money is spent. "[I]n my opinion, giving isn't just about forking over money and saying 'See you later.' It's about making sure you're getting the desired outcome...Find out what, exactly, is going to happen with the funds that you give to an organisation," he said in the December 1999 issue of Fast Company magazine.
Never one to miss a opportunity, Sun chief executive Scott McNealy is also chasing hard for a slice of China. Following an agreement between Sun and China Standard Software to establish Sun's Java Desktop System as the foundation for desktop development in the country, the company's chief executive Scott McNealy said: "We're going to immediately roll out the Java Desktop System to between half a million and a million desktops in 2004. It makes us instantaneously the No.1 Linux desktop player on the planet." McNealy is happy to sell into a country that suppresses human rights and access to the Internet while touting the benefits of a free and open technology standards. "I have always maintained that separating the good guys from the bad guys is as easy now as it was in old Hollywood Westerns. The good guys are the ones who openly publish their programming interfaces -- the modern-day equivalent of wearing a white hat -- so that anyone can make a compatible product. The bad guys are the ones who don't. The black hats don't want you to have any choice." It's unclear where countries that put you in prison for publishing information they don't like fall in McNealy's classification system.
Some businesspeople may see human rights issues as needlessly emotive and irrelevant to the world of technology. But even from a purely technical standpoint it seems incongruous that tech companies which shout about the power of the Web to transform business and society would be happy to proudly publicise deals with a regime that actively suppresses access to the Internet. In one US study, China was found to be blocking 19,000 Web sites, including those providing news, health information, political coverage and entertainment. In November last year, Amnesty named 33 companies including Microsoft, Sun and Cisco that it said were providing China with technology to achieve its Internet censorship aims.
More worryingly, according to Amnesty some 40 people are currently imprisoned or detained in China for terms of between two and 11 years in connection with the use of the Internet. Huang Qi, a computer engineer from Sichuan, has been imprisoned since June 2000 for publishing various articles on his Web site relating to human rights and political issues including the Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to Amnesty. At his trial, lawyers raised the issue of freedom of speech but the court rejected the claims, stating that "while freedom of speech is the political right of the citizens of this country, citizens must not harm the interests of the nation in exercising that right and should not use rumour or slander to incite the subversion of the state." On 21 January 2001, the Supreme People's Court ruled that those who cause "especially serious harm" by providing "state secrets" to overseas organisations and individuals over the Internet may be sentenced to death.
At the very least Gates, Dell and McNealy are guilty of serious double-talk from a technical standpoint -- by talking up the power of the Internet to change society and then selling their technology to a government intent on keeping society locked down. But more serious are the moral questions raised by being happy to bask in the glow of good deeds while turning a blind eye to humanitarian abuses in the pursuit of new markets.
