Executives from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco were paraded before the US Congress last week to explain their collusion in suppressing free speech in China – and it was a most unedifying spectacle. It's hard to say what was more offensive: the hypocrisy of the politicians, or the disingenuousness of the executives.

The issue is China's censorship of the internet and the government's active efforts to track down, prosecute and imprison people who say things not to its liking. Yahoo has recently been taking heat for turning over account information that enabled the Chinese authorities to arrest and jail a dissident journalist. Google is under fire for agreeing to filter search results to exclude things the government doesn't want its people to see. Microsoft's sin was taking down a blogger’s web page. Cisco: well, it provides the gear that enables the government to build a walled network.

Certainly, China's suppression of free expression is a deplorable thing to anyone who values Western ideals of free speech and individual liberty. (When I recently spoke to a class of visiting Chinese students at a university here they didn't really see the issue at all, but that's another story.) China is actually proving that you can run an internet that is closely policed and excludes information deemed offensive, be it references to the Tiananmen Square massacre or simple pornography.

The US companies defend their cooperation with the government on the grounds that they have to obey local laws, and that a censored internet is better than nothing "We also believe the internet is a positive force in China," Michael Callahan, Yahoo's general counsel, said. "It has revolutionised information access, helps create more open societies, and helps accelerate the gradual evolution toward a more outward-looking Chinese society."

This last assertion in particular is rather dubious; it's not obvious at all why an internet that blocks access to whatever the government finds unpleasant (or too foreign) will make China more outward-looking. But the real problem with the collective corporate testimony is that it didn't acknowledge the single, fundamental, obvious reason that their companies are toeing the Chinese government line: they want to be in China because it's a very large market where they think they can make a lot of money.

Nothing wrong with companies wanting to make money. That's what companies do. In fact, it is what they have to do. It's their responsibility. Companies can be good actors or bad actors on issues ranging from how they treat employees to how they treat the environment, but it's a little much to expect them to voluntarily forgo a market that could represent 20 or 30 or 40 per cent of their business because they don't like the government's policies. (It's not too much to expect a company with the motto "Don't be Evil" either to jettison the motto or make some effort to adhere to it on an issue like this, but that too is another story).

Indeed, the surreal aspect of last week's hearings is that the congressmen were basically trying to make the companies responsible for something that is quite obviously a public policy matter. Current US policy is to make nice with China. China enjoys most-favoured-nation trade status, and is seen as a key market – as well as a key supplier – in many industries. The current stance of the US, as a matter of national policy, is not to make an issue of Chinese human rights violations.

If the congressmen so eager to berate the internet companies really wanted to make a stand on censorship in China, they certainly have the means to do so. They could, for example, pass a law. Christopher Smith, a Republican congressman from New Jersey, has drafted a bill called the Global Online Freedom Act that would regulate how companies operate in and with countries deemed to be "internet-restricting." But it will be interesting to see how many of the legislators who chimed in at last week's hearing will actually support such legislation. My bet is not very many.

Companies, remember, want to make money, and they will surely fight Smith's bill. But when you hear their squeals, remember that there is an excellent precedent: a once-controversial law called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Enacted in the 1970s, the law prohibits American companies from bribing foreign government officials. When it was being debated, multinational corporations fought it hard, arguing that they had to adhere to the local laws and customs in the places they were doing business (sound familiar?) and that the result would not be less bribery but rather more contracts going to European and Asian firms that weren't subject to the same strictures. (Substitute "Chinese internet firms" and you have the same argument today.) In the event, though, the law did not end up damaging American companies, and it may even have struck a blow against bribery.

There any number of ways that Congress and the President could effectively prevent American companies from cooperating with Chinese censorship. But that would require thoughtful and politically risky lawmaking - as well as engagement with the issue of human rights at the highest levels - rather than cheap grandstanding. Apparently that is too much to ask.

Jonathan Weber is the founder and editor in chief of NewWest.Net, a new type of regional news and information service focused on the Rocky Mountain West in the United States. He was previously the co-founder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard

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