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Hong Kong: Government & Regulatory Issues
Coping with Controlling Neighbors
Although Hong Kong is an autonomous region, many times Beijing has been accused of excessive intrusion into Hong Kong’s domestic affairs. Indeed, businesses and the people in Hong Kong have to deal with a fairly controlling neighbor. (For more details see China page) This is a challenge that businesses face, when venturing into the Hong Kong Market, as the case on Yahoo! Hong Kong illustrates.
Yahoo.com.hk
In March 2007, Yahoo! Hong Kong was accused of disclosing private information to the Chinese authorities, resulting in the conviction of Shi Tao, a journalist. Although the Commissioner cleared Yahoo! of the privacy breach he did not rule out that Yahoo! handed over the information in fear of criminal penalty in China. This lawsuit quickly became a hot topic within the blogoshpere and it is yet to be determined whether this will have a negative effect on Yahoo! Hong Kong’s rankings.
Google and Microsoft have opted not to offer e-mail services hosting user data inside the PRC, despite the fact that they would achieve greater market share and higher profits. Ultimately, the potential costs to their companyies' reputation are too high. However, they are still at the crossroads and decisions between integrity and customers will become increasingly important.
Local Authorities Matter too: Flickr.com
In June 2007, Yahoo owned Flickr launched a Chinese version to target Hong Kong users. However, local authorities were already objecting to the content on the site. When Oiwan Lam, posted an artistic semi nude picture onto Flickr, it was classified as an act of electronic civil disobedience. Faced with possible jail time, the court finally arrived at a guilty verdict and a HK $5000 fine. The case indicates that the government is still grappling with some of the issues of freedom that social media comes with.
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Zubaidah |
Latest page update: made by Zubaidah
, Apr 10 2009, 3:19 PM EDT
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