Last year, a team of writers from the European Centre for International Political Economy suggested that China's draconian Internet filters could be defanged by hauling the country before the World Trade Organization, claiming that censorship is a trade issue.
Yesterday, the European Commission blessed this approach as Commissioner Neelie Kroes made a trip to China. 'It is one of those issues that needs to be tackled within the WTO,' she said of censorship, according to Reuters. 'I am pushing wherever I can just to get European enterprises a level playing field in China and the other way around. It should be reciprocal.'
According to the earlier paper on the subject, the WTO would be unlikely to take on the basic system of filtering. But, said the authors, 'There is a good chance that a [WTO] panel might rule that permanent blocks on search engines, photo-sharing applications and other services are inconsistent with the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) provisions, even given morals and security exceptions.'
The arguments about trade were boosted earlier this year when Google refused to continue its Web search censorship in China and eventually relocated its Chinese search functionality to Hong Kong.
The WTO does allow for broad exemptions necessary to "protect public morals" and to "maintain public order" —two of the same arguments Chinese authorities have always made to defend their censorship. But WTO rules have established high thresholds for gaining an exemption, and any measures taken under the exemptions must be "proportional."
American high-tech trade groups and free speech groups are also onboard with the "take it to the WTO" approach to China's censorship—companies like Microsoft want the issue resolved, but generally don't think it fair that they are the ones burdened with it. Instead, they would prefer that the US or EU step up and deal with the issue governmentally. The WTO might be one of the best places to do this, since it's one of the forums where foreign countries can exert leverage on China.
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