CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight - Transcript

CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight - Transcript
Thursday, January 26, 2006

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

DOBBS: Congress will hold hearings next month into Google's complete sellout to the Communist Chinese government. Google executives said this week that the company will design a new search engine especially for China that will censor topics the Chinese government does not want its citizens to read. And that Web site launched this week. Congressman Chris Smith is the chairman of the House Global Human Rights Subcommittee and he called for those hearings, and joins us here tonight. Congressman, thanks for being here.

REP, CHRIS SMITH (R), NEW JERSEY: Lou, thank you very much for having me on.

DOBBS: First, can you believe that a U.S. company would literally sell out Democratic principles in order to do business anywhere?

SMITH: Well, I'm dismayed and disappointed but frankly I'm not shocked. It is part of an ongoing capitulation in the naive belief that if we just trade and curry favor with the dictatorship that somehow they will matriculate from dictatorship to democracy, since MFN and since Bill Clinton renewed MFN in the early 1990s, there has been...

DOBBS: Most favored nation.

SMITH: ... Most favored nation station. There has been no move towards democracy. Radio Free Asia continues to be suppressed. Torture is endemic and now we see Yahoo! and others actually creating an unseemly partnership with police state. The police now make them part of their efforts to go after the human rights activists and the religious freedom activists in China and now Google's doing too.

DOBBS: And the media and news censorship and absolute constraint of freedom of expression in China. Arthur Waldron just said here, one of the foremost experts on China that 10 years ago the arrogance of the United States was that China would become more like us.

Our leading corporate executives thought that. Our politicians, in both parties. His great fear is that we're becoming more like them because we're being corrupted as we seek dollars in the Chinese market. Is that your judgment?

SMITH: Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that. It's a very provocative question. There are some good people but they don't seem to see the forest from the trees at this dictatorship and the balance of trade is $185 billion. Yes?

DOBBS: You know that there are millions of people out there that are Internet libertarians that are going to be shocked, first of all, that you're Republican, a party that has been extraordinary supportive, both parties have been.

But the Republicans perhaps more enthusiastic for U.S. multinationals. Saying that any kind of interference, and this is sort of absurd cycle that we're in of reasoning, any government interference with an Internet firm, like Google, is against their libertarian instincts, even though it is Google that is defeating Democratic principles and seeking savoir with the Communist Chinese.

SMITH: Well that's very well put. Unfortunately, again it appears very strongly that they're putting profits over principle. And we're not asking Google or Yahoo! or anybody else to promote democracy, just don't partner with repression.

Don't become part of the apparatus that suppresses and keeps freedom of thought. And especially don't be a part of the effort to put people behind bars and there are about 62, at least, cyber- dissidents that we know of in China and the most recent, or one of the most recent ones, Shi Tao got 10 years when his Yahoo! account was looked at by the Chinese government.

And they cooperated in that. They should have said, "Absolutely not. We're out of here if you force us to do that," but they didn't say that. They capitulated.

DOBBS: Congressman Chris Smith, we thank you for being here. We'll be following the hearings you'll be conducting with obviously great interest.

SMITH: Thank you, Lou.

DOBBS: And we appreciate your efforts.

SMITH: Appreciate it, thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0601/26/ldt.01.html