Google Faces Chinese Bureaucracy
June 12, 2010
Short honk: I lived in Brazil for a spell when I was in the weird grade school – high school age. I was old enough to know what was going on but too young to drive. I do recall one incident in the state office in which we lived. My father had to renew a license. There was a yellow and green government office which could have been transported from a government building in Washington, DC. There were windows with the old Department of Justice style pay windows along the wall. There were benches. There were lots of people. My father wanted to pay the fee, get a couple of thump thumps from the rubber stamp collection, and get on with his job of bulldozing the rain forest.
Didn’t happen.
My father had me stand in line. We did take turns that day, but my recollection is that we were in that hot, crowded office a long time. When we did get to the window, my father submitted his forms and the clerk looked sad. My father then dropped a paper into the tray in front of the window. The clerk looked at the paper, picked it up, smiled, and thump thumped the rubber stamp. Mission accomplished.
Source: http://saysomethingfunny.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/red-tape.jpg
I asked my father, “What was the paper?” He said, “It was part of an envelope with a conto in it.” In the lingo of Brazil in the 1950s, a conto was a bill with a lot of zeros. My father added, “Next time, we won’t have to wait in line.”
Lesson: some countries operate in a manner different from the US of A. Brazil is probably very different today. The lesson stuck in my mind.
The story “Google’s Challenges Mount in China” reminded me of what happens when a bureaucracy functions by rules different from those in America. Here’s the passage that reminded me of the potential delays and methods a decidedly non-US bureaucracy can deliver to an impatient supplicant:
To receive a license, companies must guarantee that their maps do not disclose sensitive military and government sites and that borders are labeled in accordance with Chinese law, including disputed areas such as Tibet and Taiwan. Some companies are considered a lock to receive a license, such as Baidu. It cooperates with NavInfo on its mapping service, and NavInfo was the early brainchild of the SBSM. For Google, on the other hand, guaranteeing that it can play by the rules could prove difficult because it permits users to post on its maps. An insider noted that Google has already applied for the license. But even if Google does meet all the requirements, there is no guarantee it will be granted. As a foreign company, Google will also have to gain approval from other government agencies. China’s security apparatus is known to be wary of maps — once considered a national secret — and rapid growth in the popularity of online mapping has drawn the government’s attention.
Maybe the Chinese bureaucracy will work as smoothly as auto registration here in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. On the other hand, it might not. If short cuts are sought, those might be frowned upon. My father ran a risk. Would a large company?
Stephen E Arnold, June 12, 2010
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