[Chewbacca]

Originally posted by Thoran: If you want to play in China you need to play by their rules. Personally I'd love to see a China that is more open and treats their people better, but it's not my call... I'm not Chinese. Neither is it Microsoft's call, in fact their responsibility is to follow the law in the countries they choose to have a presence in. If all of a sudden Microsoft started refusing to follow US Law they'd be shut down... and most of the complaining conservatives (I've read about this elsewhere... so I'm not implying you guys are complaining) would be carrying the pitchforks and torches. Multinationals walk a fine line, especially when dealing with countries with less than stellar global reputations. The question I always ask myself is: will it be better in the long run for the Chinese if they are engaged with the rest of the world, or would it be better to cut them off based on their perceived poor behavior. I tend to think that LONG term, the more Chinese are exposed to the free and open flow of ideas on the internet (even though the Chinese Government censors... they can't censor it ALL) the better off we'll all be. Microsoft supports Blogging in China... that's a good thing, they're bound to get their hand slapped on occasion but for the one site that gets shut down there will be others that pop up using the technology that Microsoft provides, but wouldn't be able to provide if they weren't dancing to Beijing's tune when needed.

That's a great post. [img]smile.gif[/img] Thanks for the perspective!