“Race to the Bottom”
Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship

Map of the People’s Republic of China

I. Summary

II. How Censorship Works in China: A Brief Overview

1. The “Great Firewall of China”: Censorship at the Internet backbone and ISP level
2. Censorship by Internet Content Providers: Delegating censorship to business
3. Surveillance and censorship in email and web chat
4. Breaching the Great Chinese Firewall
5. Chinese and International Law

III. Comparative Analysis of Search Engine Censorship

1. Censorship through website de-listing
2. Keyword censorship

IV. How Multinational Internet Companies assist Government Censorship in China

1. Yahoo! Inc
2. Microsoft Corp
3. Google, Inc
4. Skype

V. Company, Government, Investor and Other Responses

1. Efforts toward a voluntary Industry Code of Conduct
2. Legislation
3. U.S. Executive Branch actions
4. European Union actions
5. Investor pledge

VI. Recommendations

Acknowledgements

Appendix

Appendix I: “The words you never see in Chinese cyberspace”
Appendix II: “The Great Firewall of China: Keywords used to filter web content”
Appendix III: Details of Shi Tao’s case
Appendix IV: Details of Li Zhi’s case
Appendix V: Details of Jiang Lijun’s case
Appendix VI: Details of Wang Xiaoning’s case
Appendix VII: Liu Xiaobo’s letter to Yahoo!
Appendix VIII: Letter from Human Rights Watch to Yahoo! and Yahoo!’s response
Appendix IX: Letter from Human Rights Watch to Microsoft and Microsoft’s response
Appendix X: Letter from Human Rights Watch to Google
Appendix XI: Letter from Human Rights Watch to Skype and Skype’s response
Appendix XII: URL de-listing on Google.cn, Yahoo! China, MSN Chinese and Baidu
Appendix XIII: Comparative keyword searches on Google.cn, Yahoo! China, MSN China, Baidu, Yahoo.com, MSN search and Google.com