Truck and Barter

In the context of the Google pile-on, James DeLong notes that many in the US have turned turned against Wal-Mart, but he fails to note whether many Chinese have done so...

That's not unusual, since most US coverage of Wal-Mart in China focuses on Wal-Mart sourcing goods there. But WM also has 45 stores in China, and it is this presence -- and the approval by the Chinese government that was needed to make it happen -- that Google critics seem not to have noticed.

For instance, Mr. Kessler writes:

Users in the West may not desert them, but a billion soon-to-be-online Chinese will forever associate Google with lame and censored search results - tools of the state. That just dumb. And totally uncool.

Uncool, yes. Uninspiring, yes. Unexpected, no.

Wal-Mart never had Google's street cred among the Western elite, and I have no idea about its image in China. But I think that it's still important to ask, does Wal-Mart China stock and sell books by Chinese dissidents? Books about the occupation of Tibet? The nature of Falun Gong? Do you think you can find a book with this photo in it? Maybe, -- I don't know since I have never been in a WM China store -- though I highly doubt it, and I will assume that Wal-Mart is engaging in censorship (by just not supplying specific goods) at the behest of the Chinese government.

This leads ot a more important question: since Wal-Mart China is already censoring information available in its stores, do the Chinese people consider Wal-Mart a tool of the Chinese state? Or is it just a decent place to work and shop? I don't know the answer to these questions, but I would insist that the Chinese people are not stupid or inconsistent: why should Google be judged harsher than Wal-mart for acting in the same exact way?

Note: I am making ASSUMPTIONS here, and will gladly rewrite this post in light of hard evidence.