When some of the world’s top technology companies, including Yahoo!, Intel, Nokia and Ericsson, formed the Beijing Association of Online Media three years ago, the group seemed to be a typical trade association, sponsoring social activities and facilitating networking. Even when its activities widened last year to include “self-policing” the Internet, it seemed to be benign, targeting content that “contradicts social morality and Chinese traditional virtues,” i.e. pornography. The message was that the companies were providing a public service in spaces used by Chinese teens, not helping the government maintain political control.

Yet today it is clear that BAOM has become an active agent of the Chinese government’s initiatives to stifle discussion of political issues. The group’s slide into censorship shows how easily Beijing can co-opt Western firms into this effort. And BAOM is becoming a model in a new push to tighten control over Internet speech.

This well-researched article establishes how enthusiastically these companies cooperate with Beijing to not simply censure unorthodox thought, but shore up Chinese governmental orthodoxies. It is clear that these companies are active partners in the curtailment of communication that the Internet was once thought to make undeniable. 20,000 different examples of “politically forbidden Internet content” have been reported to the authorities “through a 200-strong team of Internet monitors (who) maintain informal links with the Beijing Public Security Bureau and are on the government payroll.”