As we approach the Summer Olympics in Beijing, the world is watching the Chinese government closely. No longer the inscrutable, sleeping giant of yesteryear, China is now one of the world's largest economies and trading partners. So it made me think of re-posting an article that I wrote two years ago about China, Google, and the complex nature of the world's relationship with the Middle Kingdom these days...

We are living in interesting times again, finally. Emerging over the past year from the singular black hole caused by the dot-com collapse, the technology industry suddenly finds itself in the center of the biggest news stories of the day.

And currently, a Google saga involving both, the U.S. and Chinese governments, the First Amendment and its relevance around the world, and the conundrumic challenge of balancing business profits with business ethics has merited lead-story status in newspapers, magazines, websites, and TV networks around the world.

Initial media reports depict the latest chapter in the saga in the form of a simple, seemingly clear-cut question: why is Google censoring results concerning issues sensitive to the Chinese government on its Chinese-language website?

Look for Tiananmen Square on google.cn, and you'll find pastoral scenes of a national landmark. Do the same search on google.com, and you'll find tanks rolling in for the kill. Don't expect anything nice to be found about Falun Gong at google.cn, and expect rough treatment of the Chinese government with the same search on google.com.

Can Google stick to its mission of doing no evil and make money at the same time? Can Google, in other words, have its wonton and eat it, too?

You know Google perceives itself to be in trouble when the company's lead attorney is making all the official corporate statements. No bold missives from the CEO, no explications from the company founders of how "don't do evil" squares with doing business in China.

Yet the tendency to censor, in effect to create one's own reality, is among the strongest of human traits. Should we be bemused, outraged, or cynical when we read about how a U.S. congressman proposes to draft legislation that will forbid Google from censoring results in China--legislation that would of course censor the censored (Google) and attempt to censor the censor (the Chinese government) while also attempting to set policy for a sovereign government other than the one this congressman was sworn to serve.

Who among us tells our life story with no embellishment, no rationalizations, no tidying up? Who among us tells any story with a purely "objective" viewpoint? And just what is this objectivity that seems to be the most desired quantity in journalism today?

It is clear that the Chinese government is bullying Google, just as it bullies anyone who does business in the country. It is also true that most people in the Western world associate Tiananmen Square with an infamous slaughter and the persecution of Falun Gong with intolerant Commies.

But to the Americans out there, let's shift perspective for a second. For example, have you ever shared a drink with a Canadian? How do you like hearing your country's government, foreign policy, and educational system run down? Have you ever had a cultured European, rather than thank your country for coming to the Old World's aid (repeatedly), instead rudely berate you about how America has treated its own Native Americans, how it embraced slavery, how it continues to be a prejudiced place with lots of street violence?  And how tolerant are most Americans toward Al-Jazeera?

I live in the quite-liberal San Francisco Bay Area, so it's almost too easy for me to find people who think Al-Jazeera is more accurate than most U.S. media, and who would readily agree with the hypothetical Canadian or European cited above.  It's also very easy to find polarized opinion about Falun Gong, which is currently embroiled in a complex debate about its suitability to participate in San Francisco's annual Chinese New Year's Parade, one of the truly spectacular events of the year.

But doing so only reinforces my point that there is no true objectivity in the human being, that the individual prisms through which we view the world shatters any pure Platonic light into so many colors so as to make it impossible to agree on more than a few simple facts inherent in any story.

The real issue facing Google, in my opinion, lies simply with the "don't do evil" thingamajig. Get rid of it, guys. Disown it. Admit you were naive. Today, almost every major corporation can be viewed as being evil by someone, whether they make SUVs or potato chips or Barbie dolls; but even cigarette companies, often cited as today's personification of evil, weren't considered evil a generation or so ago.

Evil is in the eye of the beholder, and business is business. I don't have a problem with Google searches returning different results in China than elsewhere. The information tide is rolling into the Middle Kingdom, at a peril to any rulers there who think they can stop its inexorable flow by erecting seawalls around Tiananmen Square, the Falun Gong, and whatever else they're embarrassed by.

I am quite sure that everyone in technology would much rather debate search-engine algorithms and optimization, application development environments, or derivations of Moore's Law rather than politics or religion. Certainly the Canadians, Europeans, Asians, and Americans I talk to on a regular basis stick to the business issues; it makes for a much more useful conversation. Leave the demagoguery to professionals in places like Beijing, or Tehran, or Washington, DC.

But now that technology has achieved a full-on convergence with consumer markets and global politics, don't expect the noise to go away. Add the echo chamber effect of an increasingly blogospheric media, and you'll find there's no such thing as a quiet announcement anymore.

It's also a fact that the U.S. in particular and the Western world in general has made a pact with China to do business with the country on a grand, and growing, scale. So let's do business. Develop products and services, hire people, make money, render unto Caesar, and yes, compromise when it helps the business. Business is amoral, and succeeds only when people want to buy what it has to offer, not whether anyone (including this commentator) thinks something is right or wrong.

It is business that will liberate the people of the world, not knee-jerk legislation, and not absolutist slogans. (How the people of the world will someday be liberated from business is the topic of another column!)