Chinese journalist Shi Tao is now reportedly making jewelry without pay in a Chinese prison, where he’s serving a 10-year sentence for “leaking state secrets abroad.” He was arrested in November 2004 after he e-mailed details of the government’s plans to manipulate media coverage of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Assist-ing Chinese police with the collar was Yahoo! Inc., which provided the government with Shi’s Hong Kong-based e-mail address.

Yahoo defended its action by saying all global companies must abide by the laws of the countries in which they operate. At an industry conference in October, however, Yahoo chief executive Terry Semel did allow that sometimes “on a personal level, I wince” at the compromises one must occasionally make when doing business abroad.

China attaches such strings to many of its deals with U.S. tech firms. Yahoo and Google Inc. each allow Chinese censors to block from their search results terms the government finds objectionable, such as “human rights China” and “Taiwan independence.” And Microsoft Corp. has come under fire for helping China filter what people post on blogs they create using Microsoft’s Web portal, MSN Spaces-China. Microsoft’s business partner in the venture is a firm owned by the Chinese government. Microsoft “abides by the laws, regulations, and norms of each country in which it operates,” Brooke Richardson, MSN lead product manager, told reporters in July.

Each of these companies posts declarations of “corporate citizenship” on their Web sites, which include promises to abide by various ethical standards of doing business. But promising not to act in a way that would impinge on basic human rights or freedom of expression is a level of detail they’re not willing to sign up for.

Some think it’s time they do. The Paris-based journalism watchdog group Reporters Without Borders last month joined with two dozen investment firms representing more than $21 billion in holdings in calling for these companies and others to demonstrate an increased commitment to human rights and freedom of expression in the countries where they do business.

All of these companies, and others facing scrutiny in China, rightly argue they should be given some credit for delivering on the greater good: bringing the Internet to the Chinese people.

But just as Internet usage in China is exploding, with an estimated 103 million users (about 8 percent of the population), so is the Chinese government proving masterly at controlling the information its people see online. “China’s Internet filtering regime is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world,” the academic research group Open Net Initiative concluded in an April report. A new Internet law, backed by some 30,000 “cyberpolice” on patrol in 700 cities and provinces, has led to the shutdown of thousands of sites and the imprisonment of more than 60 dissident Web users, including Shi. The ultimate goal of these activities, human rights watchers say, is to intimidate Internet users into self-censorship.

This “Great Firewall of China,” as it’s dubbed by human rights activists, wouldn’t succeed without the hardware, software and assistance provided by China’s U.S. business partners.

Routers sold by Cisco Systems Inc. form the backbone of China’s Internet. When China began using the content filtering capabilities of those routers to censor Web sites, Cisco denied that it helped the government use them that way. “Cisco Systems has not specially designed any products for any government, or any regional market, to block or filter content,” the company said in a statement. “Our customers, not Cisco Systems, determine the specific uses for . . . these products.”

Some of the investment firms who allied with Reporters Without Borders, and who own Cisco shares, last month tried to require Cisco to develop a “company human rights policy.” Cisco argued that the company’s existing policy was sufficient. On Nov. 15, shareholders sided with Cisco, defeating the resolution by a 7-1 margin.

Nor has Congress done much to urge U.S. firms to have a little backbone when negotiating with China. One rare example of a concerned lawmaker was Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va., who delivered an Oct. 18 floor speech titled “Yahoo Should be Ashamed.”

The Congressional Research Service concluded in a Nov. 22 report that “U.S. actions to combat Internet censorship in China have primarily been in the form of congressional funding for anti-censorship software.” The International Broadcasting Bureau, which runs the Web sites for the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, funds two small U.S. companies, DynaWeb and UltraReach, whose software allows Chinese users to defeat the censors and visit those sites. Think about it: The U.S. government is paying tiny U.S. tech companies to defeat censorship facilitated by the nation’s technology giants.

Rep. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J., plans a hearing in late January to explore U.S. firms’ ethical responsibilities when they do business with China. But with China holding hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. Treasury securities, and a $146 billion trade surplus with the United States, Congress is unlikely to be prodding U.S. companies to negotiate a little harder during their sales calls.

Mike Mills is CQ’s executive editor for electronic publishing. The CQ Roundtable will resume in January.