There was a great op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday arguing that China's Internet censorship amounts to protectionism. That China has been censorsing and even blocking Western media entirely seems unfair from a free trade standpoint (and even makes their attempts to infiltrate the global news media market seem a bit hypocritical). This WSJ editorial notes that when China joined the WTO China agreed to "give unlimited access and equal treatment to foreign-based or foreign owned business in ... online services." And there is even precedent: China recently lost an appeal to the WTO and is now being forced to allow foreign books, movies, and music to be distributed freely (although China has not yet complied with the ruling).

Perhaps China could, depending on interpretation, block media services that receive funding from foreign governments, like the BBC or NPR. But when it comes to for-profit sites such as Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, all of which have been totally blocked in China for months now, there is no good economic argument to allow for the blocked access. China has the largest population of Internet users in the world, and these companies are being denied access by the Chinese government to what should be one of their greatest opportunities. This drives home the point that the choice between economic and political freedom that China has tried to make is simply impossible in a global economy that is based more and more on information rather than physical goods. China's restrictions on speech, particularly online, is directly causing companies based outside of China to lose money (i.e. protectionism).  (Read more after the jump)

The recent online crackdown must be particularly infuriating for Google. A few years ago, Google took a lot of flak in the West for agreeing to censor search results for its Chinese website. Google's argument was that the Chines market is too big to risk being blocked. In the recent Internet crackdown, however, Google was blocked anyway. And apparently Baidu, Google's Chinese rival, has been left alone in the crackdown. Hopefully this latest injustice will finally make Western Internet & tech companies angry enough to join together and demand free speech for the Chinese people. China's censorship is morally wrong and a violation of the human rights of the Chinese people. Maybe now that this censorship is also causing U.S. companies to lose money something will actually be done about it.