Gady Epstein

Is a half-truth better than no truth? Is it better to have half the results that are misleading than to have no results at all? That is a very appropriate question to ask and one that I do not have an answer for you today. – Elliot Schrage, Google v.p. for corporate communications and public affairs, testifying before Congress about Google.cn on Feb. 15, 2006.

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China. – David Drummond, Google senior v.p., corporate development and chief legal officer, in statement posted online, Jan. 12, 2010.

In the span of four years, Google has tested, and for the moment shockingly rejected, a thesis that an entire community of corporations and nations has relied on in part to justify doing business with China for decades: that engagement will “liberalize” China, and that the citizens of an increasingly prosperous and globally integrated China will one day rise up and slip loose the bonds of tyranny. Or something like that.

On a fundamental level that isn’t happening, and Google has decided, in a way that perhaps only one of the leading global companies can, to take a stand for free expression. Cynics can argue (as they have already) that this move is more about business, or that this is a convenient way to exit a floundering enterprise that is running a distant second in the China search business to Baidu. I instead find the more persuasive argument to be that angering the biggest market in the world might be bad for the bottom line, even if authorities there have been making it difficult for you to do business there.

Which brings us back to the thesis, expressed hopefully but with obvious reservations by Google before Congress in 2006, that "we can do the most for our users and do more to expand access to information if we accept the censorship restrictions required by Chinese law."

Now, I am not about to embark on a general repudiation of engagement with China: There is little doubt that the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens have improved dramatically from China’s integration into the global economy over the last 30 years.

But we would be deluding ourselves if we pretend that this path is leading, inexorably, toward a democratic China with Western-style civil liberties for all, some years or decades from now. That outcome is theoretically possible, but the notion that it is likely is a common self-delusion that was summed up nicely in James Mann’s 2007 book "The China Fantasy." Mann, who was Beijing bureau chief for The Los Angeles Times in the 1980’s and is the author of a previous account of modern U.S.-China relations, "About Face," writes:

"America hasn't thought much about what it might mean for the United States and the rest of the world to have a repressive, one-party state in China three decades from now, because it is widely assumed that China is destined for a political liberalization, leading eventually to democracy."

The Google ( GOOG - news - people ) experience punctures that fantasy for the Chinese Internet, even if it remains a space where many can test the limits of openness and expression. In the last year Chinese authorities have generally tightened Internet controls, both within China through the self-censorship and filtering that Google.cn submitted to, and at the country’s borders by blocking Google-owned YouTube and Facebook and Twitter, as well as numerous human rights, news and blogging sites deemed objectionable by Chinese authorities.

None of this will change anytime soon. It is doubtful that other companies will follow where Google dared to tread. Foreign companies have little choice but to play by the Chinese government’s rules, and very few, perhaps none, have the power and stature to act as Google has done here.

Eventually the shouting over Google will quiet down, and we will still be left with a censored Internet in China, with or without Google.cn. Chinese activists will continue to do what they can to build a space for civil society, online and off. But to suggest that this path we’re on is leading inexorably toward a free, open China is truly a fantasy.

Gady Epstein is Beijing bureau chief for Forbes. You can follow him on Twitter @gadyepstein.