It's strange to consider the prospect of global censorship when living in a country with as many protected civil liberties as America. We naively think that because we live here, and because we have enshrined the right to free speech far beyond what was written in the First Amendment, we are in many ways immune to censorship. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" (Constituteproject.org). Yet there is a vital element missing there, one exacerbated by the global inter-connectivity we have come to embrace thanks to the Internet. The First Amendment applies to American citizens. It was never meant to apply to other nations. Its presence is there strictly to present American citizens with the inalienable right to speak out against what they see as injustice, regardless of the government's position on an issue.
Americans think that because we have the right to speak freely, we exercise it regularly. Yet current controversy shows very clearly that there is a new, unlikely player taking on the role of media censorship: corporations. This week has seen a storm of controversy surrounding companies censorship in relation to the current protests in Hong Kong. NBC reported three different companies found themselves getting pressured by China this week, and if you're at all interested in sports, video games or Apple products, you already know what I'm talking about. That, of course, doesn't include the controversial South Park episode "Band in China" and the show creator's response to it actually being banned in China. The creators of South Park have long stood as a comedic reprieve determined to satirize and lampoon everything as much as possible and sometimes as offensively as possible. They are not a company, per se, and have no stake in whether or not their show is aired in China which is why they are able to respond the way they have without really feeling any financial repercussions.
What is worrisome about these events is not that they happened, but the inevitability of them playing out exactly as they have due to China's vested financial interests in all of these companies. Various Chinese companies own stock in Activision-Blizzard, Apple, and the NBA. As such, they have leveraged their financial ownership almost as blackmail: follow the party line or lose access to the Chinese market. Unfortunately, companies have been bowing to that pressure. Blizzard suspended a player, revoked his winnings, and terminated broadcast contracts due to that player's vocal support of the Hong Kong protests in a live video after his tournament victory. Apple removed an app from its store that allowed people in Hong Kong to track police movements because the Chinese government insisted it was being used by protesters to ambush police. And the NBA briefly distanced itself from a GM who put out a tweet in support of the Hong Kong protesters, forcing him to apologize and delete it. They have since walked that back, carefully speaking out in support of his right to free speech without weighing in on the content of it.
All of this behavior sets a worrying and uncomfortable precedent. If companies are so invested in increasing profits by catering to a Chinese audience, they are leaving themselves open to direct control by the Chinese government. Let us be perfectly clear, here: China is not a free democracy, nor is it a free market. American companies have no right to assume it is simply because China claims it to be so. Nor do they have any right to assume the burden of control over what is and is not said by those who partake of their services.
It is not, nor has it ever been, the role of a company to censor its customers. Yet in surrendering to pressure from China to amend or remove anything it considers potentially offensive they are, in essence, censoring us. Are we not allowed to talk about Hong Kong in America unless China approves it? If we allow this to happen, it becomes inevitable that it will happen again. China has long reacted badly to any implication that Tibet is a sovereign nation. Now Hong Kong is being treated the same way. How long until Macao gets the same treatment? Myanmar? Mongolia? Nepal? Taiwan? Where does it stop? Those in power within corporations must tread a careful line right now. They must decide what is more important to them: Chinese money or American rights. Chinese money will help them in the short run, but the cost of that is the support of the consumers that helped them become the companies they are, the people who work for them, and the very essence of what makes America's free market free.
In the battle of free speech versus free enterprise, money is winning at the cost of civil liberties.